Obama's rating on handling of the US economy improves

Washington, Mar.24 (ANI): President Barack Obama continues to get high marks overall for his job performance and for his handling of the economy.

Sixty-four percent of those polled said they approve of Obama's overall job performance, while 61 percent gave him the thumbs up for his handling of the American economic crisis.

Last week, the approval rating on the economic performance was 56 percent, reports CBS.

The poll numbers can be explained in part by the fact that most Americans do not think there was much the Obama administration could have done about the bonuses. Only 12 percent think the administration had a lot of control over the payouts, while more than half say the administration had little or no control.

More than three in four Americans think the government should try to recover the bonus money paid by AIG. Only 15 percent believe the company should get more government assistance to avoid bankruptcy.

Asked if companies receiving federal bailout money should be awarding bonuses to their employees, 65 percent said such a move is unacceptable. Another 26 percent said it is acceptable to give bonuses only to mid- and lower level employees; just six percent think said bonuses should be given to whomever the company chooses.

Nearly half of Americans say President Obama is spending the right amount of time dealing with the bonuses, and the rest are split on whether he is paying too much attention (24 percent) or too little attention (21 percent) to the issue.

Meanwhile, a majority of Americans - 53 percent - think Congress is spending too little time trying to solve the nation's broader economic problems.

This poll was conducted among a random sample of 949 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone March 20-22, 2009. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher. (ANI)