Poll results, what public wants

I'm posting this so we can look back and see how our well our new Congress does the will of the voters.

By Mark Murray

The recently concluded midterm elections cost billions of dollars, generated thousands of different headlines and resulted in Republicans winning control of the U.S. Senate.

But they didn’t change much else – especially the public’s attitudes about politics in Washington, D.C., according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Consider:

More than three-quarters of Americans say the election won’t substantially change the nation’s direction;
More say they have less confidence that elected leaders in Washington will start working together to solve problems;
And Americans are split almost evenly between positive (41 percent) and negative (39 percent) reactions to Republicans controlling both the House and Senate next year.

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What should the next Congress do?

The NBC/WSJ poll also lists several actions the next Congress might take beginning in 2015. From most popular to least popular:

82 percent support Congress providing access to lower the costs of student loans;
75 percent support increasing spending on infrastructure, roads and highways;
65 percent support Congress raising the minimum wage;
60 percent support approving emergency funding to deal with Ebola in West Africa;
59 percent support addressing climate change by limiting carbon emissions;
54 percent support building the Keystone XL pipeline;
49 percent support eliminating most tax deductions in return for lower tax rates;
49 percent support authorizing the use of U.S. troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria;
44 percent support reducing Medicare and Social Security benefits for wealthier retirees;
44 percent support making new trade agreements with select Asian nations;
41 percent support cutting funding for the health-care law;
39 percent support creating legal status for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally;
34 percent support gradually raising Social Security’s retirement age to 69 by 2075.

The NBC/WSJ was conducted Nov. 14-17 of 1,000 adults, including 350 cell phone-only respondents and another 25 reached on a cell phone but who also have a landline. The poll’s overall margin of error is plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.