Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose GOP’s Windfall for the Rich
A new CBS News poll shows that the GOP’s plan to extend the Bush era tax cuts and give America’s wealthy class another massive windfall is rejected by the majority of the public.
“The American people want us to stop all the looming tax hikes and to cut spending, and that should be the priority of the remaining days that we have in this Congress,” incoming House Speaker Rep. John Boehner said Thursday. Boehner added that a House vote Thursday to extend the cuts for all but the highest-earning Americans amounted to “chicken crap.”
According to a new CBS News poll, however, Boehner is off-base in his claim that Americans “want us to stop all the looming tax hikes.”
The poll finds that 53 percent of Americans want the Bush-era tax cuts extended only for households earning less than $250,000 per year. That roughly matches the proposal put forth by the White House, which wants to extend the cuts only for incomes less than $250,000 for families and $200,000 for individuals.
Just 26 percent of Americans say they support extending the cuts for all Americans, even those earning above the $250,000 level, which is the GOP proposal.
Another 14 percent of Americans say the cuts should expire for all Americans. The Treasury Department says the cost of making the cuts permanent for everyone is $3.7 trillion over a decade. The White House plan which would not extend the cuts on high earners would cost an estimated $3 trillion over ten years. (By point of contrast, the controversial deficit commission proposal released this week would save about $4 trillion in that time.)
Seventy percent of Democrats want to extend the cuts only on incomes below $250,000, according to the CBS News poll. Forty-seven percent of independents and 41 percent of Republicans agree.
Only ten percent of Democrats and one in four independents back the GOP proposal to extend the tax cuts for all. Even among Republicans, support for extending all the cuts is less than half at 46 percent.