Politics

(WASHINGTON) — When President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday with new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sitting over his shoulder, looming between the two will be a possible standoff over raising the federal debt ceiling.

The management of how to increase the borrowing limit, which the Treasury Department has indicated will need to be done as soon as June to make sure none of the federal government’s bills go unpaid, is shaping up to be the first major obstacle that McCarthy and Biden must work together to overcome.

The conflict, along with the potentially calamitous economic consequences of a debt default, will no doubt color some of Biden’s remarks on Tuesday as he looks to reassure the 53% of Americans who are “very” concerned about that outcome, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Biden and McCarthy agree that the nation cannot default on its debt.

But with the Treasury already using “extraordinary measures” to keep the United States out of the red, that’s about all they agree on.

Now that Republicans narrowly control the House, raising the debt limit cannot be accomplished without GOP votes, giving McCarthy increased influence over negotiations, if he can wrangle his conference. But McCarthy captured the gavel in the House only after a protracted speaker election that required him making concessions to the right wing of his party.

Many of those members see a debt limit hike as a powerful bargaining chip in their efforts to slash what they see as out-of-control federal spending. McCarthy has taken to their position.

The speaker looked to preempt the president’s State of the Union speech in remarks on Monday night in which he outlined what he saw as the major risks the nation faces by failing to cut its spending. He described the $31.4 trillion national debt as the “greatest threat to our future.”

“President Biden wants Congress to raise the debt limit yet again … without a single, sensible change to how government spends your hard-earned money. None. Does that sound responsible to you?” McCarthy said. “What Americans want — and what Republicans are fighting for — is a responsible debt limit increase that puts us on a path towards a healthier economy.”

But that’s a nonstarter for the Biden administration, which maintains that the debt limit must be raised without any political negotiation or bargaining, as has been done under both parties over many years.

“It’s just that simple. There should be no hostage-taking here. There should be no attempts to exploit the debt ceiling or to leverage it,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing last month.

Biden has also pushed McCarthy to “show me your budget” — a call for the Republican speaker to outline exactly which cuts to the federal budget he’d like to see made in exchange, given his criticism of federal spending.

McCarthy has yet to present such a budget and his remarks on Monday night again lacked details about what sorts of specific cuts he’d call for.

And while McCarthy has publicly insisted that decreasing funds for Medicare or Social Security is “off the table,” Democrats and the White House have pointed to the ambiguity around his plan to suggest otherwise.

McCarthy’s comments on Monday came after he and Biden discussed the debt limit and other issues at White House last week, their first meeting since McCarthy became speaker. The sit-down yielded no commitments or outcomes, but both McCarthy and Biden described it optimistically.

“I think, at the end of the day, we can find common ground, I really do,” McCarthy told reporters in the White House driveway.

A few minutes later, the White House released its take on the meeting, saying the two men had a “frank and straightforward dialogue” and that the conversation would continue.

Both parties said no concessions were made.

Separately, top Biden administration officials have indicated that the White House will negotiate on spending and the budget in parallel talks — as long as the debt ceiling is raised without strings attached.

“One is not appropriate for negotiation; the other one is,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

The emerging impasse echoes the 2011 debt crisis, during which the country came so close to default that its creditworthiness was downgraded for the first time in the nation’s history.

At the time, the Republican-controlled House was again looking to exact spending concessions from a Democratic president.

Months before a deal, brokered in part by then-Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, was passed, then-President Barack Obama addressed the nation’s debt in his own State of the Union address.

Obama called for a five-year freeze to domestic spending that would “require painful cuts” to slow ballooning debt growth.

“I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without,” he. “But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Previous Chinese surveillance balloon incidents that occurred during the Trump administration and early under the Biden administration were not spotted by NORAD at the time, Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, told reporters Monday.

“We did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” VanHerck said.

VanHerck said that U.S. intelligence made NORAD aware of the threat posed by the surveillance balloons after the fact through “additional means of collection and made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transit in North America.”

The military commander would not specify what techniques were employed by U.S. intelligence to determine the capabilities of the balloons.

VanHerck also provided a new insight as to why the balloon was not shot down as it approached Alaska in late January noting that his “assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America and therefore, I could not take immediate action because it was not demonstrating a hostile act or hostile intent.”

Senior U.S. officials have described China as having built up a fleet of surveillance balloons that have crossed into sovereign airspace over five continents.

U.S. officials had told ABC News of prior incursions near Hawaii and Guam last February, and in the wake of the balloon being shot down off the South Carolina coast this Saturday, senior administration officials said that there had also been three additional incursions during the Trump administration.

VanHerck’s acknowledgement that NORAD had not spotted those incursions would help explain why several former senior Trump to previous brief incursions denied having been aware of any balloon incursions.

During the audio briefing with reporters, VanHerck said that allowing the balloon to transit across the United States provided “a potential opportunity for us to collect Intel where we had gaps on prior balloons.”

“This gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed. And I think you’ll see in the future that that timeframe was well worth its value to collect over,” said VanHerck.

The general would not describe how that intelligence was gathered while the balloon was in flight, making only a vague reference to the U.S. using “multiple capabilities to ensure we collected and utilized the opportunity to close Intel gaps.”

Mitigation efforts were taken to minimize intelligence collection as the balloon flew over Malmstrom AFB in Montana and Offutt AFB in Nebraska, according to VanHerck

“Just because we had the time to do that. And we also had the time to put together an effort of our own to learn about this particular balloon and what its capabilities are, and we’re going to get more information from the recovery,” John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said in a separate briefing with reporters.

VanHerck described the balloon itself as being 200 feet tall carrying a payload of intelligence-gathering equipment that weighed “a couple thousand pounds,” which he compared in size and length to a regional passenger jet.

Kirby described the balloon as having a limited ability to maneuver using propellers and a rudder though he added that “the most important navigational vector was the jet stream itself, the winds at such a high altitude.

The recovery operation for the remnants of the balloon and its payload is being carried out six miles off the coast of South Carolina in U.S. territorial waters in an area described as being 1,500 yards by 1,500 yards.

U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships are at the scene and have already recovered debris that was floating on the surface of the water according to Kirby.

While rough waters limited the recovery efforts by divers on Sunday, a Navy salvage ship is expected to be at the debris location in coming days.

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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Navy vessels on Monday swarmed a widespread debris field with divers and cranes to retrieve pieces of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by a U.S. fighter aircraft off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday afternoon.

The balloon had been traveling across the continental U.S. since at least Tuesday with the White House facing mounting questions and political blowback as to why the balloon was allowed to cross the country in the first place, especially as the U.S. faces tensions with China.

Republicans continue to condemn President Joe Biden for not having ordered the balloon shot down earlier, but Biden said Saturday he did ask for such action, until the American military advised him they should wait until the balloon wasn’t over civilian territory.

“I told them to shoot it down on Wednesday. They said to me let’s wait for the safest place to do it,” Biden told reporters.

White House spokesperson John Kirby spoke with reporters Monday afternoon to give an update on recovery efforts and to defend the decision to allow the balloon to traverse over the country.

The debris field is roughly “15 football fields by 15 football fields,” he said, and some debris was recovered “off the surface of the sea,” but weather conditions weren’t favorable on Sunday.

“Our efforts to surveil this balloon and what we’re going to learn from the recovery will prove to be valuable,” Kirby said, and the fact the balloon took time to travel under tracking will give the U.S. “clarity” on the balloons’ capabilities and China’s intentions.

Suspected Chinese spy balloons flew over the continental U.S. three times under former President Donald Trump — but the Biden White House said over the weekend that Trump and other top officials weren’t aware at the time.

“This information was discovered after the prior administration left,” according to senior Biden administration officials.

“From every indication that we have, that that was for brief periods of time — nothing at all like what we saw last week, in terms of duration,” Kirby said Monday, asked about the other instances but offering limited information.

House Republicans have promised a slew of investigations into the balloon’s handling. Some Republican lawmakers are weighing introducing a resolution Tuesday condemning Biden’s response — right before his State of the Union address — but no decision has been made.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a statement Sunday, said the Biden administration “reacted at first too indecisively and then too late.”

“We should not have let the People’s Republic of China make a mockery of our airspace. It defies belief to suggest there was nowhere between the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and the coast of Carolina where this balloon could have been shot down right away without endangering Americans or Canadians. This was a reminder of the PRC’s brazenness and President Biden missed the opportunity to defend our sovereignty, send a message of strength, and bolster deterrence,” McConnell said.

He said he hopes Biden’s “belated decision to finally do the right thing carries over into his soon-to-be-released annual budget request,” adding, “Whether it’s spy balloons or spy satellites, hypersonic weapons or stealth aircraft, massive naval construction or nuclear stockpile expansion, China’s military modernization effort is no joke.”

In a statement on Sunday, U.S. Northern Command said the balloon was brought down “within sovereign U.S. airspace and over U.S. territorial waters to protect civilians while maximizing our ability to recover the payload.”

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, meanwhile, lodged “solemn representations” with the U.S. Embassy in China on Sunday over the “use of force” against what it maintains is a “civilian unmanned airship.”

“What the U.S. has done has seriously impacted and damaged both sides’ efforts and progress in stabilizing Sino-U.S. relations since the Bali meeting.”

He said the U.S. has “obviously overreacted” and that China “resolutely opposes and strongly protests this.”

The so-called “Gang of Eight” of congressional leadership is still slated to have a briefing on the balloon this week as Republicans warn Biden of investigations to come over his handling of the matter.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, also announced Friday that he’ll hold a subcommittee hearing on the ballon.

It’s unclear when Secretary of State Antony Blinken will move forward with plans for high-level meetings in Beijing postponed last week as relations with China remain tense.

“This balloon incident has done nothing to help improve U.S-China bilateral relations,” Kirby said earlier. “And now it’s just not the appropriate time for us to have those sort of face to face discussions with them on larger diplomatic issues.”

ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Ben Gittleson, Karson Yiu, Allison Pecorin, Justin Gomez and Katherine Faulders contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — New York Rep. George Santos, who continues to claim his mother was in downtown Manhattan on 9/11 despite immigration documents indicating she wasn’t even in the United States, has invited a former ground zero volunteer firefighter to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

According to a Monday news release from Santos’ office, his guest, Michael Weinstock, joined first responders in New York City on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and was later diagnosed with neuropathy, a nerve disorder.

“[Weinstock’s] condition is a direct result of the dust and toxins released from the World Trade Center, and the condition is not covered under the World Trade Center Health Program,” the news release states, referring to the federal coverage for people sickened in the attacks and their aftermath.

In a statement quoted in the news release, Weinstock, a former Democratic congressional candidate, said: “I have travelled to Washington to bring attention to firefighters with neuropathy. This is an issue that transcends politics and speaks to my heart.”

Santos took to the House floor on Monday to advocate for expanded health coverage for people who suffer from 9/11-related illnesses. He also displayed a photo of what he said was Weinstock on Sept. 11.

“Since the World Trade Center Health Program does not cover neuropathy, people like Michael must pay out of pocket for treatment, medications and other medical needs. I ask my colleagues that we work together and find a solution and have conditions such as neuropathy be covered under the World Trade Center Program Act,” Santos said.

9/11 has become a point of controversy for Santos as one of several key parts of his biography that have been shown to be false, exaggerated or disputed by other information.

He maintained in an interview with One America News last week that “the toxic dust that permeated throughout Manhattan and my mother being present [in] downtown Manhattan” led to her death in 2016.

Santos’ campaign website also currently states that his mother “was in her office in the South Tower on September 11, 2001, when the horrific events of that day unfolded.”

However, ABC News previously obtained documents showing Santos’ mother was not in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks.

According to the documents from the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services, Santos’ mom, Fatima Devolder, applied in February 2003 for an immigrant visa from the American consulate in Brazil. The form states that she had not been in the United States since June 1999.

During his interview with OAN, Santos said he didn’t understand the immigration documents showing his mom wasn’t in the U.S. on 9/11.

“That, to me remains a mystery because I was here and I was 13 years old. So I want to understand where they’re coming from with this,” he said.

He added that while his family believes his mother died from a 9/11-related illness, “We’ve never been able to prove that through claims and we’ve never been able to qualify for claims as a family and we just let it go.”

Santos, a first-term Republican representing New York’s 3rd Congressional District, has been dealing with controversy and investigations since before he took office last month.

County, state and federal authorities are looking into a number of issues raised about Santos, including related to his campaign’s finances, while Brazilian prosecutors have said they are seeking to revive check fraud charges against Santos from when he was a teenager and New York Democrats Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres have filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee.

Santos said in December that “I am not a criminal.”

“This [controversy] will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good,” he told The New York Post.

Last week, Santos told House Republicans he would temporarily recuse himself from his two assigned committees, on small business and on science, space and technology.

A spokesperson for Santos told ABC News at the time that “the congressman is reserving his seats on his assigned committees until he has been properly cleared of both campaign and personal financial investigations.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy indicated that if he were to fill Santos’ committee seats, it would be on a temporary basis.

McCarthy insisted to reporters last week that he did not pressure Santos to recuse himself but said he has “some new questions” about the embattled congressman.

“I think going through ethics will answer some others. I think until he goes through that, it would be better that he doesn’t serve on committees,” McCarthy said on Wednesday.

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(WASHINGTON) — Previous Chinese surveillance balloon incidents that occurred during the Trump administration and early under the Biden administration were not spotted by NORAD at the time, said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, in a telephone briefing with reporters on Monday.

“We did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” VanHerck said.

Story developing…

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(WASHINGTON) — Americans expressed scant confidence in President Joe Biden and his party heading into the 2023 State of the Union address. Yet wide majorities also lack faith in their Republican counterparts, and a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds the GOP at risk on two fronts, the debt ceiling debate and its inquiry into alleged federal bias against conservatives.

Biden faces deep challenges of his own, including record economic discontent and weak job approval. Few give him credit for a range of accomplishments he may try to claim in tomorrow’s address, from infrastructure to prescription drug prices.

The public takes Biden’s side in the debt ceiling debate, with broad support for handling debt payments and federal spending as separate issues, along with extensive worry about the impacts of a default. The GOP leadership also faces skepticism about its probe of anti-conservative bias in federal agencies; most see this as an attempt to score political points, not a legitimate inquiry.

Among other issues, while Biden is calling on Congress to renew the long-expired ban on assault weapons, the public now is divided on the question: Forty-seven percent support such a ban, 51% oppose it. That reflects a 9-point drop in support since 2019, surprising given recent gun violence but confirming other data.

Internationally, the survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds a substantial rise in the sense that the United States is doing “too much” to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia – 33% say so, up from 14% last spring. Still, that leaves about six in 10 saying the United States is doing the right amount (40%) or too little (19%, down from 37% as weapons shipments have soared).

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The shift toward saying the U.S. is doing too much peaks among Republicans and conservatives, up 32 and 30 percentage points, respectively. Those compare with non-significant changes of +5 points among Democrats and +6 points among liberals.

There’s also the issue of confidence in the country’s leadership. As detailed below, it’s sorely lacking, with 68 to 72% of Americans expressing little or no confidence in Biden, newly elected Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and both their parties in Congress.

Debt debate

Biden has a wide advantage on one urgent and contentious issue, the debt ceiling. Just 26% of Americans adopt McCarthy’s position that Congress should allow the government to pay its debts only if the administration agrees to cut federal spending. A broad 65% instead align with Biden’s view that the issues of debt payment and federal spending should be handled separately.

Even among Republicans, fewer than half – 48% – support coupling debt payment with cuts in federal spending. That drops to 22% among independents and 10% of Democrats.

Underlying these results is broad worry about the consequences of default: A vast 82% are very or somewhat worried that a government default would damage the economy. That includes a majority, 53%, at the top end of the scale, “very” concerned.

Notably, this concern is bipartisan – about eight in 10 adults across the political spectrum are concerned about the economic impacts of a default, and being very concerned peaks among Republicans, at 59%.

That said, about two-thirds of Americans favor separate discussion of the debt limit and federal spending regardless of whether they’re more or less worried about the impacts of nonpayment.

Confidence

Most broadly, the survey shows a now-common result: A public with deep economic dissatisfaction, sharp polarization and little faith in leaders on either side of the aisle. These attitudes are informed by the fact that, as reported Sunday, 41% say they’ve gotten worse off since the president took office, a high in polling back 37 years.

The public by an extensive 68-31% expresses just some or no confidence in Biden to make the right decisions for the country’s future. It’s a similar 70-28% for the Democrats in Congress. But it’s even worse for McCarthy – a vast 71-19% lack confidence in his leadership. And it’s 72-25% for his party.

Weaponization

In addition to the debt ceiling debate, the GOP faces headwinds in its inquiry into alleged anti-conservative bias in federal agencies by the newly created House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Americans by a 20-point margin, 56-36%, see the probe as “an attempt to score political points” rather than a legitimate investigation.

Indeed, while views are highly partisan, even among Republicans, 34% see the weaponization inquiry as an attempt to score political points, and a tepid 57% think it’s a legitimate investigation. Results among conservatives are almost identical.

Part of the GOP’s problem is widespread doubt about its premise. Relatively few Americans, 28%, think federal agencies in fact are biased against conservatives. Eleven percent think they’re biased against liberals; an additional 11% volunteer that they’re biased against both. A plurality, 42%, think federal agencies are not biased against either group.

Among conservatives themselves, 55% think federal agencies are biased against them. That’s 47% among people who define themselves as somewhat conservative, rising to 66% of those who say they’re very conservative (15% of all adults).

Assault weapons

While Biden has undertaken a new push to ban assault weapons, public views on the issue are now closely divided: Forty-seven percent support a ban, 51% oppose it. That reflects a 9-point drop in support for an assault weapons ban, and a 10-point rise in opposition, since last measured in an ABC/Post poll in September 2019. (Results were roughly similar, 49-45%, in a Quinnipiac University poll last July.)

Support for an assault weapons ban was this low just once before, a 45-53% result in December 2015; that poll, and this one, are the only two in which more than 50% have opposed a ban. In most other polls since 1995, majorities have supported an assault weapons ban, peaking at 79% in May 1999. It was 62% as recently as April 2018.

The decline in support for an assault weapons ban since 2019 is broadly based across groups. It would take a study focused in more detail on the issue to assess its reasons, but other studies provide clues. In a Pew Research Center poll last year, the public divided on whether or not making it harder to get guns would reduce mass shootings. And in a Pew study only among parents of children under 18, fewer than half, 45%, thought an assault weapons ban would be extremely or very effective at preventing shootings in schools specifically.

Accomplishments

Presidents typically tout their accomplishments in a State of the Union address. It can be a tough sell: Just 36% of Americans think Biden has accomplished a great deal or good amount as president; 62% say he’s accomplished not very much or nothing. In an ABC/Post poll in January 2018, Trump was in a similar boat.

Nor does Biden get much credit for a disparate list of items he might raise in tomorrow’s address. Unemployment has dropped from 6.3% when Biden took office to 3.4% now (a low since 1969) and the economy added a robust 517,000 jobs last month – yet the public by 60-34% says he has not made progress “creating more good jobs in your community.”

Other efforts largely have yet to hit the ground, making it difficult for Biden to claim credit. Despite the huge infrastructure bill he signed into law in November 2021, the public by 60-32% says Biden has not made progress “improving roads and bridges in your community” – perhaps because much of the actual work is yet to be done.

Similarly, legislation Biden signed in August includes a tax credit up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle. But it took effect just this year; so far, the public by 56-26% says Biden has not made progress “making electric vehicles more affordable.” (A substantial 18% are undecided.)

Lastly, despite measures to lower prescription drug prices for people on Medicare, the public by a closer 47-30% says Biden has not made progress “lowering prescription drug costs,” with 23% unsure. Again, some of the bill’s provisions take effect this year; others are years off.

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Jan. 27-Feb. 1, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 26-25-40%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the PDF for full results, charts and tables.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Maryland. See details on the survey’s methodology here.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Four in 10 Americans say they’ve gotten worse off financially since Joe Biden became president, the most in ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 37 years. Political fallout includes poor performance ratings for Biden and a tight hypothetical Biden/Trump rematch next year.

Given disaffection with both leaders, a rerun of the 2020 presidential election is hardly enticing: Nearly six in 10 Democratic-aligned adults don’t want to see Biden nominated again for the job, and half on the Republican side would rather not see Donald Trump as their party’s nominee.

If those were the choices and the election were today, the poll suggests it could be close: Among all adults, 48 percent support Donald Trump and 44 percent are for Biden; it’s a similar 48-45 percent among registered voters. The differences are within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

The big hit on Biden is the economy: With inflation moderating but still high, 41 percent say they’re not as well off financially as they were when Biden took office, the most in nearly three dozen ABC/Post polls to ask the question since 1986, when Ronald Reagan, who popularized the “better off” phrase, held office. Just 16 percent in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, say they’re better off.

By contrast, nearly two years into Trump’s presidency, far fewer – 13 percent – said they’d gotten worse off; more, 25 percent, were in better shape financially.

Biden’s overall job performance rating, 42-53 percent, approve-disapprove, has been under water, and steadily so, since September 2021. On issues, Biden has just 37 percent approval for handling the economy, 38 percent on the war in Ukraine and 28 percent on the immigration situation at the Mexican border.

Biden’s approval rating after two years in office is well below average compared with the previous 13 presidents. Three have been in about the same boat at this point (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan) and one has been lower – Trump, at 37 percent, in polling by ABC/Post and previously Gallup. The pre-Biden average is 56 percent.

EMOTIONS – Underscoring Biden’s challenges, many more Americans have a negative rather than positive emotional response to the prospect of his winning a second term: The public by a broad 62-36 percent would be disappointed or even angry if he were re-elected, rather than enthusiastic or satisfied.

Responses to a hypothetical Trump victory also are negative overall, but less so, 56-43 percent. Part of the reason is that Biden loses slightly more of his base – 26 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would be unhappy if he were re-elected, compared with 20 percent of Republicans and GOP leaners who’d feel that way about a Trump win.

Trump occupies somewhat more space at the emotional extremes. Seventeen percent would be enthusiastic about his winning another term; 36 percent would be angry about it. Given a Biden re-election, fewer would be enthusiastic – 7 percent – but also fewer would be angry, 30 percent.

DOCUMENTGATE – For all his woes, Biden outpoints Trump on another measure – their apparent mishandling of classified government documents. Forty-five percent of adults think Trump intentionally did something illegal in his handling of classified documents after he left office as president. Many fewer, 27 percent, say the same about Biden after his vice presidency.

That doesn’t mean Biden is fully off the hook in terms of public attitudes on the issue. Forty-eight percent think he acted wrongly, but not intentionally, in handling classified documents. Just 16 percent think he did nothing wrong. Twenty-nine percent think Trump was unintentionally wrong; 20 percent see no wrongdoing on his part.

BETTER OFF? – Inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in last June, a 40-year high; it’s eased since but remained a still-high 6.5 percent in December. That’s produced widespread economic pain. Nearly two years into Trump’s presidency, 25 percent of Americans said they’d gotten better off since he took office. As noted, fewer, 16 percent, now say the same about life under Biden.

After Trump’s first year, just 13 percent felt worse off financially. That spiked to 35 percent under Biden a year ago, and its level now, 41 percent, is the most measured in 33 ABC/Post polls since September 1986. The previous high was 36 percent among registered voters in September 2011, amid a plethora of economic troubles including 9 percent unemployment.

Economic sentiment is subject to partisan influence; 72 percent of Republicans say they’ve gotten worse off under Biden (more than any other group), while just 12 percent of Democrats say the same. The trouble for Biden is that it’s 39 percent among independents, vs. 11 percent worse off among independents in 2018.

Biden’s approval rating is vastly lower among worse-off Americans than others – unsurprising given the disproportionate number of Republicans in their ranks. Perhaps more telling, given independents’ usual swing-voter role, is this: Among worse-off independents, Biden has a mere 12 percent approval rating and Trump leads him in vote preference by 82-8 percent. Among independents who are in the same shape or better off financially as when he took office, by contrast, Biden’s approval vaults to 67 percent and he leads Trump by 62-29 percent.

Worse-off independents disproportionately lean Republican and better/same independents largely lean Democratic. Nonetheless, because independents are less firmly rooted in partisan predispositions, they can be movable – making their economic sentiment a measure to watch as the 2024 campaign heats up.

NOMINATION NATION – Just 31 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say the party should nominate Biden for re-election; 58 percent say it should pick someone else. That’s no better than it was for Biden last September, 35-56 percent.

Two Democratic groups stand out as most opposed to Biden for the nomination – younger adults and Democratic-leaning independents. Among 18- to 39-year-olds, 69 percent would like to see the party choose someone other than Biden, who already is the nation’s oldest president. Anti-Biden sentiment on this measure reaches 72 percent among independents.

Still, even among mainline Democrats, just 39 percent would like to see Biden as the nominee; 50 percent think not. Indeed, the only group in which he’s even numerically above water in support for the nomination is Black Democrats, who divide 47-41 percent on the question. The sample size for that group is small and the difference is within the margin of error.

On the Republican side, overall 44 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would like to see Trump as the party’s nominee, similar to 47 percent in September; these compare with 67 percent support for him to be the nominee heading into the 2020 contest. Forty-nine percent now would like to see the party pick a different candidate.

The most pro-Trump group among Republicans and GOP leaners is those who call themselves very conservative – 55 percent back him for the nomination, the only group to do so by a statistically significant margin. His other best groups, at 52 percent support, are non-college graduates, rural residents and those with lower household incomes. Most opposed to Trump in the GOP ranks are college graduates (67 percent), people with higher incomes (66 percent), GOP-leaning independents (61 percent) and moderates (56 percent).

APPROVAL and VOTE – Among other results, Biden’s approval rating remains highly polarized; 81 percent of Democrats approve of his work, compared with 6 percent of Republicans; it’s 45 percent among independents. Compare to Trump at this point in his presidency – 78 percent from Republicans, 12 percent among Democrats.

A key difference is independents, who gave Trump a 32 percent approval rating, 13 percentage points lower than Biden’s from independents now.

That said – and while it’s very early in the cycle – independents today support Trump over Biden by 50-40 percent, a slight difference, meaning it’s significant at the 90 percent confidence level rather than the customary 95 percent confidence. There are miles to go before November 2024, but it’s worth keeping in mind that in nine of the last 12 elections, whoever won independents won the presidency.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Jan. 27-Feb. 1, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 26-25-40 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The downing of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon by the U.S. military was met by lawmakers with a mix of praise for the safe and successful operation, criticism for it not happening sooner and concern over what intelligence may have been gathered and how to prevent something like this from happening again.

The balloon was shot down by a U.S. fighter aircraft off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday afternoon after traveling across the continental U.S. since Tuesday, according to officials. The Pentagon has said the high-altitude balloon was being used for surveillance, disputing China’s claim that it was a civilian aircraft used for meteorological purposes.

President Joe Biden told reporters on Saturday that he ordered the Pentagon to shoot the balloon down “as soon as possible” on Wednesday. However, the operation was held off until the balloon — carrying a payload described as being the size of three buses — was off the coast, where threats to civilians were limited.

“They decided — without doing damage to anyone on the ground — they decided that the best time to do that was when it got over water within our 12-mile limit,” Biden said. “They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.”

A senior defense official told reporters there was value in waiting to shoot down the balloon aside from just the safety of people on the ground.

“The surveillance balloon’s overflight of U.S. territory was of intelligence value to us,” the official said during a briefing on Saturday. “We were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment, which has been valuable.”

Lawmakers across the aisle applauded the military for successfully taking down the suspected surveillance balloon, though some said it took too long.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries thanked Biden and the U.S. military for “putting the safety of the American people first.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer commended Biden’s “leadership in taking down the Chinese balloon over water to ensure safety for all Americans.”

Tennessee Republican Rep. Mark Green, chair of the Homeland Security Committee, said he was “pleased” that the “espionage tool” won’t be returning to China.

At the same time, several lawmakers, including Green and fellow members of his party, reiterated criticisms that the balloon should have been brought down sooner — before it crossed the continental U.S. — and that the situation called for a more forceful response.

Green said that “damage to U.S. national security and American sovereignty was already done.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said Biden “refused to stop China,” while Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., called it a “dereliction of Biden’s duty.”

“We still don’t know what information was collected and where it was sent,” Scott tweeted.

On Sunday talk shows, Republicans kept up the questions over the timing of the military’s decision to down the balloon.

“I can assure you that if we fly a balloon over China, they’re going to shoot it down, and probably a lot sooner than we did,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“What began as spy balloon has become trial balloon, testing President Biden’s strength and resolve, and unfortunately the present failed that test,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., added on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that while he commended Biden for ordering the balloon to be shot down, “he didn’t do that until a week aft it entered U.S. airspace.”

Even Biden’s defenders among congressional Democrats said the balloon’s mere presence in the U.S. indicated broader issues in the relationship between Washington and Beijing.

“We should not have had this kind of incursion into the United States and we have a real problem with China on a number of issues, from their human rights violations to their violations of international business law to even the challenges we’ve had with them on overt spying. So I’m grateful that the military took decisive action when they and how they did, but we, obviously, have issues here,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Sunday on “Face the Nation.”

Senior administration officials have told ABC News that shooting down the balloon safely sent the message that the U.S. protects American lives while responding “effectively” to the violation of U.S. sovereignty.

Amid the security concerns, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the balloon didn’t pose a physical or military threat and, once it was detected, the U.S. took steps to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information.

A senior military official told reporters Saturday that the balloon was deemed unlikely to provide much more to China from flying over than could already be gained from its satellites.

“Nevertheless, this balloon was clearly crossing over sensitive sites, including sensitive military sites. And so we took additional precautions to make sure that whatever additive intel value would be minimized,” the official said.

The eventual shoot-down then served to “neutralize any intelligence value it could have produced” by preventing it from returning to China, the official said.

In the wake of what he called China’s “inexcusable” and “incompetent” spying, Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said this incident will be a “major focus” of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this week.

As the balloon debris retrieval is underway, Michigan Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin called for all Congress members to be briefed on the situation in the coming week and as more is learned, while urging stronger steps against China beyond Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponing his planned travel in the country this weekend.

“Whether through new sanctions or tighter restrictions on U.S. exports to China, the message needs to be loud and clear,” Slotkin tweeted.

Chinese surveillance balloons have previously been spotted over countries across five continents, including in East Asia, South Asia and Europe, according to a senior defense official. In the U.S., they transited the continental U.S. briefly at least three times during the Trump administration, senior administration officials said Saturday.

Following the resolution of this latest balloon, Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said, “We need ensure that this never happens again.”

ABC News’ Justin Gomez, MaryAlice Parks and Matt Seyler contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — One hundred and twenty-eight House Republicans and nearly all Republican senators on Friday filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court opposing the Biden administration’s federal student debt cancellation plan, which has been halted as tens of millions of Americans await the justices’ ruling on its legality.

While White House officials have been adamant that the president is within his authority to wipe out hundreds of billions in government-backed loans to provide “breathing room to tens of millions of working families,” Republicans challenging it take the opposite view.

The forgiveness plan that could relieve up to $20,000 for eligible loan recipients is an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers and a violation of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act), according to the House GOP brief.

“The Biden administration’s student loan bailout is a political gambit engineered by special interest groups; abusing the HEROES Act for such a ploy is shameful,” House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said in a statement.

The House GOP brief included 25 members on Foxx’s committee and roughly 100 other lawmakers. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not sign it, though Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan did.

Separately, 43 Republican senators signed their own brief in support of the challenge to the loan forgiveness program. Led by Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, they also call the president’s plan unlawful and claim it exceeds his office.

The White House has pushed back.

“While opponents of our plan are siding with special interests and trying every which way to keep millions of middle class Americans in debt, the President and his Administration are fighting to lawfully give middle-class families some breathing room as they recover from the pandemic and prepare to resume loan payments in January,” spokesman Abdullah Hasan said in October.

However, the House Republicans say they believe Biden is exploiting the language of the HEROES Act, which the administration argues vests the education secretary with expansive authority to alleviate financial hardship for federal student loan recipients as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Indeed, the entire purpose of the HEROES Act is to authorize the Secretary to grant student-loan-related relief to at-risk borrowers because of a national emergency — precisely what the Secretary did here,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a Supreme Court filing defending the proposed debt cancellation.

After legal challenges last year saw the forgiveness program halted by lower courts, the Supreme Court announced in December that it will hear oral arguments on the issue at the end of February.

A decision on the program is then expected by June.

The moratorium on loan repayments, which was first put in place under President Donald Trump earlier in the pandemic, is now set to expire 60 days after the decision or 60 days after June 30 — whichever date comes first.

A vocal opponent of Biden’s plan, Foxx also accused the administration of “bypassing Congress” to implement loan forgiveness.

“Congress is the only body with the authority to enact sweeping and fundamental changes of this nature, and it is ludicrous for President Biden to assume he can simply bypass the will of the American people,” she said in her statement.

Foxx told ABC News in an interview last month that she believes it is an “injustice” for taxpayers to fund the administration’s “scheme.” The plan would cost $400 billion, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and its nearly half-a-trillion-dollar price tag worries Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C.

Despite the White House saying the cancellation would give needed economic relief, Duncan said it would be sending the U.S. further into a “debt spiral.”

“The Court should invalidate the Secretary of Education’s sweeping student loan forgiveness program since it trespasses on Congressional authority and violates the separation of powers,” he said.

The U.S. Education Department has said the president’s decision to cancel up to $10,000 for some loan recipients — those who made less than $125,000 on their 2020 or 2021 taxes or $250,000 filing jointly — or $20,000 for low-income recipients who received Pell grants could impact roughly 43 million Americans who owe $1.6 trillion in student loans.

That was particularly important in light of how COVID-19 upended the economy, according to the White House.

“This is why we took this action — to make sure that tens of millions of Americans are able to deal with a time that was very difficult, especially in the last couple of years,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC News’ Karen Travers last week. “That’s been the important priority of the president: to make sure folks … who felt the pinch if you will, who felt the hurt the most these past couple of years due to what COVID did to the economy, got a little extra help.”

After the cancellation program launched last year, 26 million people signed up online before it was halted by the courts.

Of that group, 16 million were approved before the department’s website stopped accepting applications to let the legal process play out. However, no loan forgiveness has been discharged.

Last month, over a dozen advocacy groups like the NAACP filed briefs in support of the president’s plan.

“Student loan borrowers from all walks of life suffered profound financial harms during the pandemic and their continued recovery and successful repayment hinges on the Biden Administration’s student debt relief plan,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in response to the coalition of groups joining in support of the plan. “We will continue to defend our legal authority to provide the debt relief working and middle-class families clearly need and deserve.”

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(WASHINGTON) — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Sunday that he is considering a run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“I’m definitely thinking about it and having those conversations,” Sununu told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

The governor, who was just overwhelmingly reelected to a fourth term, said “the message is new leadership” and touted his own track record running what he called the “most efficient” state government in the U.S.

“But at the end of the day, you’re going to have a lot of Republicans that get in that race,” he said. “They’re all really good people. They’re really good candidates. … And you got to have that discussion about where we’re going to go, both as a party and make sure we’re going there as a country.”

The field of 2024 GOP contenders already includes former President Donald Trump while former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to announce her own bid later this month, sources have told ABC News.

Sununu, a vocal Trump critic, is skeptical of his general election chances. “He could get the nomination, but he can’t get it done,” Sununu said.

He pointed to the 2022 midterm elections, where several major Trump-backed candidates fell short, as a sign of Trump’s electability concerns. Sununu, a self-described “free-market principled Republican,” said the party should focus on finding a conservative candidate who isn’t too divisive.

“What I’ve tried to espouse to with Republicans is, ‘Look, we want to vote for the most conservative candidate that can win in November and get stuff done in ’25,'” he said.

Sununu said that his personal vision was this: “I believe government has to get out of your way. And we’ve done it really, really well here in New Hampshire. We’re sharing that model across the country.”

Good leadership is what is lacking out of President Joe Biden’s White House, Sununu argued, faulting Biden both for his response to a Chinese reconnaissance balloon flying over the country last week and what Sununu said was a disingenuous picture of the economy.

“Go into a grocery store and just talk to people in the cereal aisle. What are they feeling? You know, do they feel confident about this leadership that the president? No,” Sununu said. He cited a new ABC News/Washington Post survey that four in 10 Americans feel financially worse off under Biden.

“The best leadership is one that looks inside, says, ‘What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong, right?’ If we don’t acknowledge the problem, we can’t fix it,” Sununu said, adding, “You need to see more of that out of Washington.”

The Biden administration’s approach to the Chinese balloon, revealing its presence days after it entered the U.S. and then shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, was “too little, too late,” Sununu said.

U.S. officials have said they delayed any military response to prevent hurting civilians and took steps to limit any intelligence risk.

“Again, you have to have leadership. You have to be transparent. You have to be fast-acting,” Sununu said.

When asked about Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, Sununu contended that the commander-in-chief will wrongly take credit for current economic progress as the country recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought widespread job loss.

Sununu said he expects Biden to tout the unemployment rate, at a decades-low, but “after a pandemic, that wasn’t very hard.”

Boasting about declining inflation, which is now at a year-over-year rate of 6.5%, would be similarly self-serving, Sununu said. “Inflation was at a record high — of course it’s coming down,” he said. “It couldn’t have gotten any higher.”

“The prices are not going to go back to where they were. I know the Biden administration likes to pretend that,” Sununu said, predicting that the economy would be headed for years of so-called “stagflation,” in which rising costs limit growth.

Despite his sharp criticisms of Biden, Sununu said he still doesn’t think Trump can win against him in a 2024 rematch.

“Trump is going to be seen as a very extreme candidate,” Sununu said. “The country is going to push back against it.”

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