By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Americans rank fixing the federal government as one of the top problems facing the country, only behind the economy and jobs, said the editor in chief of the Gallup polling company on Thursday.
Frank M. Newport, appearing as the guest speaker at a Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon, said the American public is "so distrustful in many ways of the federal government."
He said the public, as a whole, has lost confidence in the way legislation is enacted.
In the latest Gallup poll on the subject, congressional job approval stood at 14 percent, an uptick compared to 9 percent last fall. Meanwhile, confidence in Congress as an institution is at 7 percent, the lowest in Gallup’s history, he said.
Mr. Newport said President Barack Obama’s approval rating is at 44 percent, better than where his predecessor, George W. Bush, was in the sixth year of his presidency.
"So Obama has managed to hold on to a fairly respectable image," he said.
In terms of politics, he said there is a "tremendous desire" for a third party, with more than 60 percent of Americans saying there needs to be another option to the Democratic and Republican parties.
He said people fed up with things are "voting with their feet," resulting in a lot of inter-state mobility of people who are leaving one state to move to another. That will have repercussions, he warned.
"And as you’ve seen the analyses, we’re going to end up with a lot states with heavy pension burdens and big taxes and a dwindling tax base to support it that are just going to cave at some point underneath that burden," he said.
Polling data showed that 41 percent of New Jersey residents said they would leave the state if they could. That is behind Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada and Rhode Island, "all of which have a lot of government and other kind of job issues," he said.
New Jersey is tied for first nationally with New York among residents, 77 percent, who say their taxes are too high, Mr. Newport said.
