In April 2000, 71 percent of Americans told Gallup/CNN/USA Today interviewers that the economic news they had heard or read about recently was “mostly good,” and 19 percent said it was “mostly bad.” A year later, the numbers were reversed. Sixteen percent this past April said the news was mostly good, but 75 percent described it as mostly bad. Responses to a more recent question in mid-August confirm the bleak tidings. Two-thirds said they had heard or read mostly bad news.

Congress and the Politics of the Shrinking Surplus

It’s too early to know how Americans will react to the news of a decreasing budget surplus. Most Americans have been enjoying their summer vacations, and news about budget squabbles in Washington has been far from their minds. But surveys conducted over the past few years may provide some clues about their reactions. Most important, Americans have been skeptical that a budget surplus ever existed and pessimistic about rosy budget forecasts. Back in March, an ABC News-Washington Post poll revealed that just a quarter of respondents believed the official forecast of a $5.6 trillion surplus over the next decade is realistic; 69 percent said it is unrealistic. Also, in a Princeton Survey Research Associates-Newsweek poll from the same month, 22 percent said it was safe to rely on the accuracy of projections about the size of the surplus, but 67 percent said there was a good chance that the surplus would be smaller.

Long-standing doubts about the surplus and suspicions about budget gimmicks in Washington may make it difficult for Democrats to capitalize on the issue. When Gallup asked in late August whether President Bush, the Republicans in Congress or the Democrats in Congress were responsible for the decrease in the surplus, there was a lot of blame to go around. Seventy-two percent said Bush was responsible, 71 percent cited the Republicans in Congress, and 62 percent blamed the Democrats. Still, twice as many said Bush was “very” responsible than held this view of Democrats in Congress (33 to 15 percent).

When asked by Gallup in the new poll which party would do a better job of handling the federal budget, Americans were evenly split, with 45 percent saying the Democrats and 44 percent pointing to the GOP. Those results are virtually identical to a mid-July Harris Interactive poll for Time and CNN in which 43 percent said they trusted Bush more to handle the surplus, while another 43 percent felt this way about the Democrats in Congress. In a CBS News-New York Times poll taken in March, people were evenly divided (43 to 43 percent) on whether they trusted the Republican or the Democratic Party to make the right decisions about what to do with the surplus. The news about the shrinking surplus hasn’t affected judgments of the President--yet. Fifty-five percent, down from a virtually identical 57 percent in Gallup’s mid-August poll, said they approved of the way he is doing his job.

Tom Who? Denny Who?

In a late July-early August Princeton Survey Research Associates poll for Bloomberg News, 68 percent told interviewers that they had never heard of, or couldn’t rate, Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.). Eighty percent had never heard of, or couldn’t rate, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Home-Schooling Juggernaut

For the first time in the 33-year history of the Gallup-Phi Delta Kappa polls, a majority of respondents (51 percent) assigned either an A or B grade to the schools in their communities. That’s up from the 2000 Gallup-Phi Delta Kappa poll, when 47 percent gave their local schools an A or B. Only 11 percent in the poll, conducted in late May and early June, gave schools in their communities an A. Views about home schooling have improved much more dramatically than views about local schools. In 1985, when Gallup-Phi Delta Kappa interviewers asked about home schooling for the first time, 16 percent said it was a good idea for the nation. In the new poll, 41 percent gave that response. Republicans were much more likely to view it positively than Democrats (47 to 34 percent). Forty-three percent in the new poll said home schooling contributes to raising the nation’s academic standards, but 50 percent disagreed.  

Karlyn H. Bowman is a resident fellow at AEI.