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Public Opposition to Bailout Mania Grows

For whatever polls may be worth, here is the latest on the public mood against borrow-and-spend profligacy of government interventionism that forces taxpayers to foot the bill for financial institutions' avoiding real consequences for their lousy judgments and greedy risk-taking.

Poll: Most not happy with bailout, oppose spending more

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The government's financial bailout has not worked so far, a majority of respondents to a national poll say, and six in 10 don't want Washington to spend more money on the rescue.

Sixty-one percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday oppose providing more government money in the financial bailout.

There are some supporters, however. Thirty-eight percent say the government should provide more assistance to ailing banks and other financial institutions.

Most of the 1,245 adult Americans questioned for the poll were surveyed before Thursday's Senate vote to release the remaining $350 billion in the financial bailout program.

"One reason for the opposition to more money being spent may be that more than eight in 10 said that the first $350 billion of taxpayer money for the bailout didn't work," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director. "Only 14 percent say that the money accomplished what it was supposed to do."

Regardless of the apparent public opposition to the bailout, the Senate voted 52-42 Thursday to release the remaining funds.

The 61 percent who oppose providing more taxpayer money for the financial bailout is up from 56 percent who opposed the initial bailout in mid-October."

Comments

Anonymous said…
The first $350B disappeared with no accountability into the hands of corporatists who no doubt provided enormous amounts of lobbying money to Congress in exchange for it. As such, I'm among the 14% who think the money did exactly what it was intended to do. And for that reason also part of the 61% and the 56%.
January 17, 2009 at 11:00 PM
Brian Miller said…
Yeah, now let's wait for the OUTRAGED campaign by FreedomWorks and the Republicans against the release of the second half of TARP.

Considering their hilariously over-the-top campaign of fury against some loans for GM and Chrysler, I'm sure that we can expect an onslaught several orders of magnitude larger for the upcoming $350 billion, right?

Right?

Hello?

*crickets*
January 18, 2009 at 2:45 AM
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