Cabinet secretaries on Capitol Hill again to sell Iran deal

Representative Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the committee, said he had “serious questions and concerns” and that input from the administration officials would be critical to the review process.

President Obama’s overall approval rating was 49 percent in the poll, with 47 percent disapproving.

The committee’s chairman, California Congressman Ed Royce, says the agreement has “several shortcomings”.

Two-thirds of Republicans, 66 percent, and a majority of independents, 55 percent, say Congress should reject the deal.

An ABC/Washington Post survey released last week had 56 percent of Americans supporting it.

On another subject, 41 percent of Americans said the economy was in good shape, compared to 59 percent who described it as poor.

And in a bad sign for the president, much of that growing negativity about the economy comes from those in his own party, particularly younger Americans.

Since then, the Obama administration has been aggressively pitching the deal to a skeptical American public and Congress. Many Republicans have vowed to do everything in their power to block the deal’s full implementation. They claim that the deal will speed Iran’s path to the bomb, lift sanctions on an active terrorist state, threaten the state of Israel, and provide zero assurances that Iran will ever give up its quest for nuclear weapons. Fewer, 38 percent, say their personal situation has not improved. In September 2011, 58 percent said they were not any better off than three years earlier, while just 32 percent said they were better off. That shift is evenly spread across most partisan and demographic divides.

The telephone-based poll of roughly 1,000 U.S adults was conducted July 22-25 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.