Boston Herald

Americans sour on Big Government in latest Gallup polls

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Note to Joe Biden and co. — this would be a good time to read the room.

The word is that while they are gleefully hoisting the Big Government is Great flag, fewer Americans are saluting.

According to the latest Gallup poll, we’re favoring a more hands-off approach for government in addressing the nation’s problems after rare support for a more active role last year. Currently, 52% say the government is doing too many things that should be left to individual­s and businesses, while 43% want the government to do more to solve the country’s problems. Last year, a recordhigh 54% of U.S. adults said the government should do more to solve problems.

Which makes sense — last year, the height of the pandemic, was awful. The “expert advice” on COVID seemed to change monthly — wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, wear two masks — and as swaths of the country entered the brave new world of lockdowns, Americans encountere­d empty grocery shelves, hoarding and waves of job losses. No wonder we turned to the government for salvation.

Now, however, we’ve weathered the worst, employers are hiring, people are watching movies in theaters again, kids are back in school, we’ve gotten our bearings and are ready to say back off to the powers that be.

Biden was riding high one month into his presidency, ready to Build Back Better.

“Joe Biden has a very profession­al team behind him, he’s in excellent shape with the country at large, he’s riding the crest of the wave out to the left, and he can get big things done,” David Gergen, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former adviser to four U.S. presidents of both parties told the Financial Times in March. But he added, “There’s going to come a day when the pendulum will probably swing back the other way.”

And here we are.

Gallup found that all party groups are less likely now than a year ago to favor a more active government role, but independen­ts’ opinions have changed the most. In 2020, 56% of independen­ts wanted the government to do more to solve problems, compared with 38% now. Independen­ts are even less inclined to want a more active government role today than they were in 2019 before the pandemic began, when 45% held that view.

Given a choice, half of Americans say they prefer fewer government services and lower taxes, while 19% want higher taxes and more services. Twenty-nine percent want taxes and services as they are now.

The multi-trillion dollar spending sprees on the table on Capitol Hill will usher in the biggest expansion in social welfare programs since President Lyndon Johnson’s day — the opposite of what Americans are telling pollsters that they want to see happen.

And 54% say the federal government has too much power. We don’t know whether the poll was taken before or after the administra­tion got the bright idea to have the IRS poke around in our bank accounts if we’re making transactio­ns over $600, just in case we’re cheating on our taxes, but if anything embodies “too much power,” this is it.

It has been reported that many Democrats are worried about the midterm elections. But if the administra­tion remains tone deaf to what Americans really want from government, and especially what they don’t want, 2024 is their year of greater concern.

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