Expectations for U.S. policy-makers - results of 'Nation's Business' readers' poll on 1992 election of President Bill Clinton and the new Congress

Nation's Business, March, 1993

Poll respondents express concern about making progress on the economy.

The Clinton administration and the new Congress face a major challenge in convincing small business that they will recognize its concerns, a Nation's Business poll indicates.

The poll was taken before the president submitted his official formal legislative program to Congress and well before Congress began dealing with most of his major proposals.

Future Nation's Business surveys will determine small-business reaction to policy developments affecting the enterprise system as they unfold throughout the legislative year that has just begun.

Results reported in this article were obtained in a Where I Stand poll related to the arrival of the new administration and the new Congress. Findings of this monthly poll are forwarded to key officials in the executive and legislative branches.

Participants were not optimistic that the new team of decision makers in Washington would achieve significant progress soon on resolving economic problems.

The survey was geared to the extensive political change in Washington. Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since 1981, when Ronald Reagan began the first of his two terms as president. Democrat Jimmy Carter served from 1977-81.

While Democrats continued to hold majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill, the arrival of more than 120 newcomers to that body has been viewed as the first step toward a substantial change in the way that the national legislature operates.

There has been a general expectation that the freshman members, many of whom based their campaigns on pledges to bring about wholesale reforms in the way Congress does business, were more attuned than their predecessors to the necessity for a sound business climate.

Whether that expectation will be realized remains to be seen, but the Where I Stand poll, taken before the legislative year began, indicates that the small-business community does not now expect such a favorable impact by the freshmen.

Two-thirds of the respondents to the Nation's Business poll said the makeup of the new Congress makes them less confident than they had been that the lawmakers would achieve significant progress on the economy soon. And nearly three-fourths said that the outcome of the presidential election made them less confident about achieving that same goal in the near future.

Two-thirds said they expect the climate for enactment of pro-business policies to be less favorable to small business over the next two years. Three-quarters said they were not optimistic about the prospect that this Congress would enact reforms making it more responsive to business.

The results of the poll reflect the strong view of small-business people-which has endured from one administration and Congress to another--that too many federal policies are inimical to enterprise.

The extent of change in small-business attitudes toward Washington will probably be related directly to the extent to which those policies are modified or at least not intensified.