Americans Are Less Optimistic, Wary of Bureaucracy, Poll Finds

Americans have scaled-down expectations for their lives, and most believe that the federal government hinders rather than helps them attain the American Dream, a new national poll found Tuesday.

Still, few Americans think that cutting federal programs will improve government performance, the poll found. Instead, nearly three out of four Americans believe that government “could be effective” if it had a better work force; the bureaucracy, not federal programs, was seen as government’s greatest impediment.

And while nearly two-thirds of Americans favored giving more responsibilities to states, more than half also believe that state government, like federal authority, “impedes more than it assists,” the poll said.

“The public has not really given up on government,” pollster Peter Hart said. “When you give them a choice, they will tell you that we need better management, not necessarily smaller government or giving all the responsibility to the states.”

Hart, a Democrat, and Republican colleague Robert Teeter conducted the survey of 1,003 Americans for the nonpartisan Council for Excellence in Government, an organization of former high-level government officials.

The poll suggests that the Republican Congress is correct in diagnosing Americans’ general malaise toward government, in criticizing federal ineptitude and in demanding “devolution” of federal power to the states.

But it also supports the Democrats’ view that government--properly applied--can help. It suggests that Vice President Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government” initiative reflects a majority view that focusing on management and personnel can improve performance, even as government shrinks.

Hart said the survey showed Americans today have sharply limited their horizons.

Only 49% of respondents believed their children would achieve a higher standard of living than their own, while 45% believed their children would be worse off.

Americans by a wide margin, 56% to 31%, believe that government policies hinder rather than help “in trying to achieve the American Dream,” the survey said.