Nearly six in ten Americans approve of the eleventh hour budget deal struck between Congress and the White House to avert a government shutdown, according to a CNN poll released on Monday. And what’s more, a plurality give Democrats the most credit for making it happen.
In the poll of American adults, 58% said they approved of the budget deal, compared to 38% who disapproved.
Additionally, the poll found that a 48% plurality of respondents credited Obama and Congressional Democrats the most for preventing a government shutdown. Thirty-five percent of respondents gave more credit to Republicans, while 11% thought both sides were equally responsible.
While majorities of both Democrats and independents support the compromise, a plurality of Republicans dislike it, with fully half of them saying that their party gave up too much ground on the deal.
Democrats supported the compromise by a 66%-28% split, while independents backed it 56%-39%. But among Republicans, 47% saw the deal as a good thing, while 49% gave it a thumbs down because they felt the party had gotten the short end of the stick. Exactly 50% of Republicans said the party’s leaders had given up too much in the final deal.
That deal, announced about an hour before Friday’s midnight deadline, cuts roughly $39 billion from Obama’s initial 2011 budget proposal. Final details of the agreement have yet to be finalized, though a Republican backed rider that would have stripped all federal funding for Planned Parenthood — a provision many Democrats found intolerable — was reportedly removed to secure the deal.
The provision to defund Planned Parenthood was one of the biggest sticking points in crafting a final compromise. And according to the poll, Democrats may have won a political victory in getting it dropped, as a strong majority of respondents said they oppose that measure. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) opposed eliminating federal funds for Planned Parenthood, versus only 34% who said that funding should be cut off.
The poll was conducted April 9-10 — the two days following the budget compromise — among 824 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 3.5%.
