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Poll: Majority of Americans Believe Big Government Is the Only Factor Holding Economy Back

55 percent of Americans say economy is good or excellent

President Donald Trump with Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin / Getty Images
August 1, 2019

A new poll shows that Americans approve of the current state of the economy and that they view regulations and government spending as obstacles to further improvement.

The ScottRasmussen.com/HarrisX poll found that 55 percent of Americans rated the economy as good or excellent and 37 percent said the economy was getting better, compared to 24 percent who thought it was getting worse. Fifty-two percent of respondents said their personal finances were good or excellent.

The poll also found that 56 percent Americans viewed cutting government spending as a way to improve the economy and 59 percent said the same of cutting budget deficits. A plurality of respondents also said deregulation would improve the economy, 41 percent to 32 percent.

Congressional Republicans have emphasized that they want to run on the economy in 2020. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) wrote in the Daily Signal last month, "The most effective way to continue to unleash our country’s economic potential is by keeping Washington bureaucrats out of Americans’ paychecks." House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (Wyo.) said the economy was a winning issue for Republicans to take back the House. President Donald Trump has also said that a Democratic president would create an "economic sinkhole."

Claims by Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio.) and Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) about the economy during the Tuesday and Wednesday Democratic debates were rated false by the Associated Press. Ryan claimed that Americans were forced to take two or three jobs to get by, and Harris said hundreds of thousands of autoworkers would be thrown out of their jobs before the end of the year.