US Voters Prefer Government Shutdown Over Spending Increases - Poll

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - More than half of all US voters would rather see a federal government shutdown than an increase in spending, a new Rasmussen poll revealed on Monday.

"A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and the online survey finds that 55% of Likely US Voters would rather have a partial government shutdown until Congress can agree to either cut spending or keep it the same. Just 31% would rather avoid a partial shutdown by authorizing more spending, while 14% are not sure," Rasmussen said in a press release.

A brief shutdown early Friday morning finished when both the US House of Representatives and Senate enacted a continuing resolution to keep the government funded for six more weeks, while also raising sequestration budget caps on military and non-defense spending for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, suspending the debt ceiling until March 2019 and added $90 billion in disaster relief for California, Florida and Puerto Rico. Also, Donald Trump signed into law a temporary spending deal expected to push budget deficits past $1 trillion annually with new military and domestic outlays.

The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters on February 7-8 and has a margin of error of three percent.

READ MORE: Trump Signs Spending Bill to End Brief Government Shutdown

In January, US government agencies stopped their operations because of delays in the adoption of a temporary bill on the financing of institutions, however, the Congress adopted a budget for the period until February 8. This shutdown has come just over three weeks after the US government went into shutdown mode in January after the Senate has not managed to reach a deal on the institution's budget. The deal was thwarted by Democrats, who insisted on the inclusion of immigration measures in the spending bill, to which the White House and Republicans were opposed.