President Barack Obama has billed his "grand bargain" as the adult compromise because it has something for everyone to hate. The package would raise the $14 trillion debt ceiling (which the public hates), raise taxes by $1 trillion (which Republicans hate) and cut spending by $3 trillion (which Democrats hate) over 10 years. As the president argued in Monday's news conference, it's time for Washington to eat its peas.
In November 1946, a tall, mustachioed figure stood alone on a railroad platform at Washington's Union Station, waiting for the president of the United States to make his ignominious return to the capital. In victorious times, the platform would have been full of welcomers; as it was then, at the time of their party's defeat, Dean Acheson, the future secretary of state, was the only one waiting for President Harry Truman.
When it comes to frozen treats, Americans prefer to keep it simple.
Most Americans remain worried about inflation and lack confidence in the Federal Reserve to keep inflation under control and interest rates down.
Consistent with trust in individual citizens rather than government officials, most adults nationwide still trust a jury over a judge to determine the innocence or guilt of a defendant. However, faith in juries is down a bit following the Casey Anthony verdict.
As the Beltway politicians try to figure out how they will raise the debt ceiling and for how long, most voters oppose including tax hikes in the deal.
The United States is a country that has been peopled largely by vast surges of migration -- from the British Isles in the 18th century, from Ireland and Germany in the 19th century, from Eastern and Southern Europe in the early 20th century, and from Latin America and Asia in the last three decades.
There are a lot of pieces to the debt-ceiling deal. There are the taxes upon taxes, as The Wall Street Journal editors describe it. That's the roughly $1 trillion in new Obama taxes on top of what he's already signed into law. It's an economy and jobs killer.
As the nation struggles with high unemployment and a depressed housing market, voters are evenly divided about which worries them more—that the government will not do enough to fix the economy rather than do too much.
So where are the jobs? Job creation has basically flattened over the past two months -- very bad news, as unemployment exceeds 9 percent.
For the second week in a row, 25% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, July 10.
Trust in the U.S. banking industry has steadily slipped over the past three months, and the number of Americans that lack confidence now outweighs the number that is confident.
Americans continue to believe life exists in outer space, but they are less sure whether a human will walk on Mars within a quarter of a century.
Confidence that that the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror soared following the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden and has remained high ever since.
My friend Francie's mother used to be known by all as "the Nation." It was a loving nickname based on her tendency to make pronouncements to one and all about what the nation thought of a particular topic. She would laugh.
Some people can spot a slight in every compliment, whereas others -- the happy ones -- find a compliment in every slight. So last week, as a free-market, low-taxes, constitutional conservative, I happily found an apparently unintended compliment from the liberal New Republic.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the major lobbying force in Washington, DC for the business community, but voters have mixed feelings about the organization.
A generic Republican candidate earns the highest level of support yet against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match up.
One-in-five working Americans continue to classify themselves as poor, while the number of those who consider themselves middle class has fallen to a two-year low.
With the last planned U.S. space shuttle currently circling the globe, Americans are slightly more supportive of the NASA program than they were a year-and-a-half ago.
