Obama's popularity plummets over spending cuts wrangle

President Barack Obama has suffered a sharp decline in public support after he and Republican leaders failed to agree a deal to avert deep cuts to US government spending.

Obama's approval rating last week fell by seven points to 46 per cent, its lowest since he won re-election last November. His disapproval rating also rose to 46, a record high for the same period.

The poll findings appeared to represent an abrupt end to a post-election "honeymoon", during which Obama scaled heights of popularity that he had not enjoyed for three years.

They emerged after Obama tried to blame Republicans for inflicting "unnecessary and inexcusable" damage on the economy by allowing the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts.

The so-called "sequestration" of public spending was scheduled in 2011 as a doomsday scenario to force both sides to agree to a more tolerable plan for reducing the $845 billion US budget deficit.

Yet it was triggered last Friday when no agreement was reached. Republicans refused to consider Obama's long-standing demand to collect more tax revenue by closing a loophole used by top earners.

If left in place, it will over the next decade reduce spending on the US military by $492 billion and cut spending on health care for the elderly by $123 billion, among many other areas.

The president last week dismissed claims that he could have forced a deal, saying he had offered cuts to cherished benefit programmes, but Republicans had not budged. "I am not a dictator," he said.

However, further polling indicated on Tuesday that the Obama was increasingly being held responsible for Washington's political gridlock by the American public.

A CBS survey found that 33 per cent of people blamed Obama for sequestration, compared with 38 per cent who said it was the Republicans' fault. A poll by Pew two weeks ago found that 49% blamed Republicans, while 31 per cent held the president responsible.

The House of Representatives is expected to debate today a Republican proposal to avert a shutdown of the government at the end of March by funding its public spending plans until October.

The proposal would "lock in" the sequestration cuts, softening their impact only in certain spending areas such as the military, the FBI and border security. Democrats, who control the Senate, are expected to propose their own adjustments to cuts in social programmes.