Fifty-seven percent disapprove of the way Boehner is handling his job, the survey found. Poll: Debt deal bad for Boehner

House Speaker John Boehner boasted this week that he got 98 percent of what he wanted out of the debt and deficit negotiations with the White House and Senate Democrats.

But Boehner’s apparent victory may be a Pyrrhic one. A new national poll not only finds record low approval ratings for Congress overall, but it also shows the American public disapproving of how congressional Republicans and the tea party handled the debt talks.


Fifty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of the way Boehner is handling his job, according to a New York Times/CBS News survey released Thursday evening. The speaker’s disapproval rating is up 16 points from mid-April, and is ten points higher than the 47 percent who said they disapprove of how President Obama is handling his job.

A plurality of respondents said the tea party has too much influence in the Republican Party (43 percent), while 41 percent think the movement has too little or just the right amount of influence.

Congressional Democrats earned a 66 percent disapproval rating in the survey, lower than congressional Republicans’ 72 percent rating but up 8 points from a survey taken in mid-July. Republicans in Congress saw their disapproval rating climb just one point since the mid-July survey.

For Congress overall, just 14 percent of respondents said they approve its performance — an all-time low in the N.Y. Times/CBS News findings, which date back to 1977.

Obama’s approval rating stood at 48 percent in the survey, a single point higher than a Times/CBS survey in late June. His disapproval rating stood at 47 percent.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said they trust Obama more to handle the economy, versus 33 percent who favored Republicans in Congress.

In what could be seen as good news for the White House, the survey found that respondents were more likely to blame congressional Republicans for the difficulty in reaching a budget deal (47 percent) verses Obama and congressional Democrats (29 percent). And 52 percent said they believe Republicans compromised too little with Democrats on the agreement.

For the purpose of cutting the deficit, 63 percent said they favored raising taxes on households earning more than $250,000 a year — the threshold favored by the Obama administration. Fifty percent of respondents also said they believed the debt deal should have included at least some increases in tax revenues, versus 44 who said it should have relied only on spending cuts.

Compromise is key, most respondents said — 85 percent favored more compromise by both parties in Washington; just 12 percent said the parties should stick to their positions.

The survey of 960 adults was conducted on Aug. 2 and 3.