Tax cuts aren’t a political panacea after all
by digby
They make the GOP donors happy to be sure, which is the main purpose. But they were also supposed to thrill the public into voting for Republicans and the Godhead Donald Trump. That’s not working out:
Public support for the recent tax overhaul plunged in the past two months, as more voters became ambivalent about it, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
Just 37 percent of registered voters said they supported the tax-cut laden law, down from 44 percent in an April poll. The number of voters who were undecided or offered no opinion leapt to 24 percent from 17 percent.
The 39 percent of respondents who said they opposed the law was unchanged from April.
Even among Republicans, support for the law dropped to 70 percent, from 80 percent in April. The number who moved into the undecided column jumped to 19 percent from 10 percent.
The poll surveyed 1,989 registered voters from June 22-24. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Only 25 percent of voters said they had noticed an increase in their paychecks as a result of the law, while 52 percent said they hadn’t. In the April poll, 22 percent said they had seen an increase and 55 percent said they hadn’t.
Republican lawmakers have been counting on the tax cuts, which they moved through Congress last year without Democratic support, to fatten Americans’ wallets and buoy GOP candidates in the November midterm elections.
Last week, Republican lawmakers and tax-cut advocates celebrated the six months since the legislation was passed, pointing to job growth and business investments that they attribute to the cuts. Democrats did counter-programming, claiming the cuts overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.
House Republicans are planning more tax votes in the fall, including making permanent the individual income tax cuts that are set to expire in the law.
The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll tracked with other recent surveys. A recent Monmouth University poll also showed slipping public support for the tax law and a surge in the undecided: 24 percent in June, up from 16 percent in April.
A RealClearPolitics average of polls from April to June had opposition to the tax law at 43 percent and approval at 36 percent.
When they start to scream about the exploding deficit, which is the second part of this nefarious strategy, as a way to cut the safety net to the bone and literally throw children, elderly and disabled into the street, this picture must be waved in their faces and they must be told to go to hell:
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