Instead, voters want higher taxes on the rich. Imagine that:
The poll reveals that the public has little desire for an all-cuts approach to deficit reduction, and that by a 17-point margin (56% to 39%) it wants the next budget agreement to include new tax revenues from the wealthy and corporations, in addition to spending cuts. Independents favor a balanced approach by a 19-point margin and moderates support it by a 42-point margin.
The poll also shows that by a 40-point margin (68% to 28%) the public wants Congress to focus on both creating jobs and reducing the deficit, not to focus only on deficit reduction.
When it comes to what to do about the new $110 billion in automatic spending cuts, known as the sequester, which are set to kick in next January, the public by a two-to-one margin (53% to 27%) wants to see at least half of the cuts replaced with revenue from the wealthy and corporations.
And strikingly, voters overall support a proposal to cancel the sequester spending cuts entirely and replace them with new tax revenue from the wealthy and corporations by 16 points (50% to 34%).
“The poll reveals a public that wants any new budget deal to include significant new revenue from closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich and corporations,” said Geoff Garin, President of Hart Research Associates. “They do not just want a debate about cutting spending. The party that is on the side of a balanced approach will hit the sweet spot with the public.”
While there has been much talk in Congress about using any revenue generated from closing tax loopholes to reduce income tax rates, the poll shows that the public has almost no interest in this approach. Instead, by a margin of 82% to 9%, the public says revenue generated from limiting tax deductions for the wealthy or closing corporate tax loopholes should be used for public investments and deficit reduction.
I think it would be nice if the budget/revenue/tax policies shown to be favored by the general public were actually the policies that get enacted.
That might happen if we had a political party that favored the interests of labor and the resources utilized in the commons, as opposed to the interests of capital and finance. I think we used to have such a party.
I wonder whatever happened to them?
The one article sentence that struck me as unusual was “…Independents favor a balanced approach by a 19-point margin and moderates support it by a 42-point margin…”
Apparently, that means that the views of “independents” are much different from those described as “moderate”. I wonder why?
Do a good many Republicans describe themselves as “independent” just because it sounds nicer?
Because only 9% of the public believes that the Congress is doing a good we have a chance of voting every one of these 1 percenters out of office one year from now. Will that help? It can’t hurt.
Where did the word “job” go? Maybe somebody didn’t have one and needed it?
I wish someone had the balls to poll the hard question. Yes, upper brackets are far too low and corporate tax evasion is epidemic. The public sees that. But middle class tax brackets were reduced in Bush’s first year on the bubble induced premise there was a “surplus” to be returned to the taxpayer. It was a revenue trap designed by the Grover Norquists of the Republican Party to starve discretionary and entitlement spending out of the federal budget. The bubble burst before the tax cut even came into effect and we plunged deeply into deficit spending to fund the Afghani war, Iraq war, Homeland Security and the national security establishment. Much of the current deficit is directly fuelled by middle class tax cuts of 2001. The largest chunk of revenue we are missing is the temporary tax cut of that year still being extended to the middle class. You want another “Bill Clinton” balanced budget without the tech bubble this time? Restore the Clinton tax rate on the middle class. That’s the tough question.