Just 16 percent say US headed in right direction: survey

Sixteen percent of respondents in a survey said the U.S. is headed in the right direction as the country is bracing for significant economic problems amid ongoing debt ceiling talks. 

The Monmouth University poll, published Wednesday, found that while only 16 percent of respondents believe that the U.S. is headed in the right direction, 74 percent of those surveyed said the country is headed in the wrong direction. 

This marks a 6-point decrease from a similar poll published in March, when 22 percent of respondents said the country was headed in the right direction, according to the poll. 

The latest poll comes as Republicans and Democrats continue negotiations on reaching a final debt ceiling deal before the June 1 deadline, when the Treasury Department says that a possible default could occur. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated Wednesday that “it seems almost certain that we will not be able to get past early June.”

On the debt crisis, 42 percent of respondents in the new poll said it is accurate that the country will suffer significant economic concerns if the debt ceiling is not raised, while 30 percent of those surveyed said those claims are exaggerated and 28 percent said they have no opinion. 

About one-third of respondents said they approve of how each side is handling the debt ceiling issue, but 55 percent of those surveyed disapprove, according to the survey.

One-quarter of respondents said that raising the debt ceiling should be tied to negotiations over spending on federal programs, while 51 percent of those surveyed said the two issues should be dealt with separately. 

The Monmouth University survey was conducted from May 18-23 with a total of 981 respondents participating in the survey. The poll’s margin of error was 5.6 percentage points.