obama's economic stimulous loses favor

It has been nearly one year since President Barack Obama signed into law a $787-billion economic stimulus act controversial in Washington but generally supported outside.
The White House maintains that 1.5 million jobs have been created or saved as a result of the act, and the administration's economists insist that it also has enhanced an economic turnaround in which the nation's Gross Domestic Product has started growing again.
Yet public support for the measure has waned, a new poll today shows. It could be that, despite any purported gains from an act whose effects have not been fully realized yet -- with some of the spending spread out across a second year with investments in alternative energy, education and other initiatives -- the public still sees another indicator of woe:
Unemployment, which ran at 7.7 percent when Obama was sworn into office, stood at 10 percent nationally in December and significantly higher in some states.
Most Americans surveyed now -- 56 percent in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released today -- oppose the administration's stimulus program, with just 42 percent voicing support for the act.
In March, weeks after the act was signed into law, a CNN poll found public support running at 54 percent, opposition at 44 percent.
The admnistration has touted the program, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, on street signs where some of the money has gone into roadbuilding or bridge repair. It also included some payroll tax cuts.
The president is likely to tout the benefits of the stimulus in his State of the Union address this week. But the latest survey suggests that it's a hard-sell -- the act which cleared the House with no Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate also is probably the last economic stimulus that the administration is likely to win in a political environment significantly altered by a coming 41-vote GOP bloc in the Senate.
The newest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll of 1,021 adults was conducted Jan. 8-10 and carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.