Americans Support Democrats' Resolve On EPA Budget Issue

A whole lot of people breathed a sigh of relief last week when Democratic Congressional leaders held firm against their Republican counterparts' attempts to hold the federal budget hostage over ideological issues like protecting clean air.

Now those Democratic leaders can breathe their own sighs of relief because the polling shows that voters support their resolve. As The Hill reports, polling released today by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation shows that "71 percent favor continued funding to the EPA to enforce its greenhouse gas regulations."

Here's the exact question asked:

Would you favor legislation that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from spending any money to enforce regulations on greenhouse gases and other environmental issues, or do you think the federal government should continue to provide funding to the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce those regulations?

And the results are even more encouraging at the detailed results level, which reveals that 68% of Independents support EPA's work to reduce carbon pollution.

Support is also strong by region. In fact, the poll shows the strongest support for EPA in the mid-west where 80% of respondents support the EPA. Obviously, the Senators from the midwest need to pay more attention to the folks back home, seeing that many of those Senators voted against the EPA last week.

(The Poll didn't ask about how people viewed the deplorable deal to make killing wolves legal, which my colleague Andrew Wetzler blogged about.)