The public's opinion of the federal government took a beating during the Bush Administration, according to research by the Pew Center for the People & the Press. I think a lot of this has to do with lack of adequate staffing at almost all domestic federal agencies. There just are not enough warm bodies to get the work done and the public has noticed the difficulty they have in dealing with these agencies and the poor performance they get in exchange for their tax dollars. Anyway, take a look at the graph. I think it speaks volumes.Jan 18, 2009
What Bush Did To The Federal Government
The public's opinion of the federal government took a beating during the Bush Administration, according to research by the Pew Center for the People & the Press. I think a lot of this has to do with lack of adequate staffing at almost all domestic federal agencies. There just are not enough warm bodies to get the work done and the public has noticed the difficulty they have in dealing with these agencies and the poor performance they get in exchange for their tax dollars. Anyway, take a look at the graph. I think it speaks volumes.
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6 comments:
Sadly, this is true. Although in my experience, people do not blame us as individual employees--they generally understand that we are doing the best we can with what we have. But, The federal govt as a whole is just failing to get things done.
What Bush Did to the Government?
I think most polls show the rating for Congress as low or lower than his rating.
Plus the financial problems can be laid on people like Barney Frank that pressured banks to loan money to people to buy houses they couldn't afford.
The Iraq war was a big mistake, but he went along with Congress on No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D and vetoed almost zero spending bills sent to him by Congress, so he had a lot help in screwing things up.
How about showing the numbers BEFORE Bush's first term so we see if there was already a downward trend when he took office? The spike at 73 is likely a brief, and expected, jump due to 9/11. Hasn't people's opinion of the federal government been dropping since the 1960s?
Also, the title of your post is misleading, at best. It should refer to what Bush did to people's opinion of the federal government.
Yes, it was Congress as well as President Bush, who underfunded agencies. Remember that until January 2007, his party, the Republicans, had controlled Congress for a long time.
And the Democrats have had control for the past two years, and have largely done nothing. They couldn't even bother enough to make it a campaign issue.
Take a look at this for some historical perspective on Presidents' approval ratings:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html
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