NEW YORK -- Given a choice, most Americans said they would have preferred the government spend more money to create jobs rather than cut taxes. The April Money/ICR poll has found that three-quarters of Americans say that if they had had a choice between enacting the 2003 tax cuts or spending additional money to create new jobs, they would have picked job creation. The national poll, fielded last week, also found that half of all Americans would also have preferred cutting the deficit over last year's tax cuts. And a majority of Americans -- 60 percent -- said they didn't benefit personally from the tax cuts of 2003. The poll also found that about half of Americans say their federal tax burden is too high and 4 in 10 -- 41% -- say their taxes are about right.Overall, 76% of Americans said they would have preferred the government devote resources to job programs instead of tax cuts in 2003. Women (81%) were only slightly more likely to choose creating new jobs than men (70%). Preference for jobs creation over tax cuts was especially keen among Democrats (89%) and Independents (83%), but more than half of all Republicans (54%) also picked jobs. Only 9% of Democrats preferred tax cuts over job creation.If they had been given the choice, more Americans say they would also have chosen reducing the federal deficit (49%) over tax cuts (42%) last year. A majority of Republicans (56%) said they would have chosen the 2003 tax cuts over deficit reduction. Conversely, more Independents said they would have picked deficit reduction over the tax cuts (49% vs. 40%) and Democrats picked deficit reduction over tax cuts by a 2-to-1 margin (63% vs. 30%).Overall, Americans are evenly divided (48% vs. 45%) on the question of whether the 2003 tax cuts were successful at stimulating the growth of the U.S. economy. However, while 23% of Republicans said that the tax cuts were very successful at stimulating the economy, no Democrats said they were very successful. Fully 79% of Republicans said the tax cuts were somewhat or very successful in sparking economic growth while 65% of Democrats said they were not too successful or not at all successful. Independents were more divided, with 43% saying the cuts were very or somewhat successful and 52% saying they were not too successful or not successful at all.On the question of who would do a better job managing the economy over the next four years, Americans who are registered to vote were split in a statistical dead heat between Bush (41%) and Kerry (38%).Despite various reports indicating improvement in the economy, almost three-fourths of Americans (72%) said that their personal financial situation is either the same (51%) or worse (21%) than at this time last year. Less than one-third (27%) report they are better off. Women (78%) were more likely to feel their situation as the same or worse than men (66%). Eighty-five percent of Democrats, 75% of Independents and 50% of Republicans reported that their economic situation is the same or worse than last year.The Money/ICR poll was conducted with a nationwide sample of 1007 adults between April 6 and 10, 2004. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The poll was fielded by International Communications Research (ICR) using its EXCEL telephone omnibus survey of adults. ICR is one of the nation's leading market and opinion research firms and is headquartered in Media, Pennsylvania. For more information on this methodology go to: http://www.icrsurvey.com/omni_srv.html .Source: MONEY MagazineWeb site: http://www.icrsurvey.com/omni_srv.html "