Progressive Musings

I forget.  Is it conservatives or liberals that like balanced budgets?  It seems like they used to be a big hit with conservatives, but I'm not so sure anymore.  One thing is clear -- most Americans are at odds with the Bush tax cuts...

In two recent polls, one conducted last month for the Associated Press and one conducted last week for Money Magazine, a majority of Americans didn't feel that they benefited from the Bush tax cuts and would have preferred that the money be spent on job creation programs or reducing the budget deficit.

In the AP poll...

"If you had to choose, would you prefer balancing the budget or cutting taxes?"

Balancing the budget - 61%
Tax cuts - 36%

49% said that their total tax burden -- federal, state and local taxes -- had gone up.  Only 13% said that their total tax burden had gone down.

53% said that the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $200,000 should be eliminated.  45% said let's keep 'em.

In the Money poll, a differently worded question got a closer result...

"If you had to choose between the 2003 tax cuts or reducing the federal deficit, which would you choose?"

Deficit reduction - 49.6%
Tax cuts - 41.6%

Given a choice between the tax cuts or a job creation program, 75.8% chose the jobs program.  83% of Democrats and Independents and a surprising 54% of Republicans chose a jobs program over tax cuts.

Also, 60.3% of respondents said that they did not benefit from the 2003 tax cuts.

And it's not just these two polls that are at odds with President Bush.  PollingReport.com has quite a few more...

In the latest Gallup poll, people were asked about different groups.  Are "upper-income people" and "corporations" paying their fair share?  63% and 69%, respectively, said no.

In a January CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, people were asked, "Do you think the tax cuts which Congress passed and George W. Bush signed into law have mostly helped the U.S. economy, have had no effect, or have mostly hurt the U.S. economy in the past year?"
41% said "mostly helped.  55% said they had had "no effect" or "mostly hurt."

In a CNN/TIME poll taken around New Year's Day, 58% said that corporations that use offshore tax shelters should not be eligible for government contracts.

In a CBS News/NY Times poll taken last September, respondents chose reducing the deficit over tax cuts by a 59% to 28% margin as the better way of helping the economy.

In a September, 2003, Fox News poll,  61% said that the 2003 tax cuts have not helped their family's finances.

Now I know that President Bush doesn't govern by the polls and that he doesn't read much -- he's said that he depends on his advisors to tell him what he needs to know, but shouldn't someone let him know what the average Joe thinks about his economic policies.

While I'm on this subject, the Gadflyer has done some calculations about tax cuts as a job creation tool.  Assuming that the 308,000 jobs created in March stays constant through two Bush terms (AAAHHHH!) for a total of 15.2 million jobs, and assuming that Bush succeeds in making the tax cuts permanent for a cost through 2008 of $2.19 trillion (yes, that's with a 'T'), each one of those jobs would cost $143,512.  Must be some mighty good jobs...

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• #1 Comment from musenla 
  4/20/04 2:26 PM | Permalink

  Oh he's not gonna worry about real facts and figures;his head will hurt and he'll start scrambling back to Crawford for another vacay (33 at last count is it?)!