Americans disliked the tax cut when they believed it was a tax hike. Now that they know it’s a tax cut, they like it.
It’s a simple story, and was entirely predictable, but it’s one most of our media didn’t believe or at least wouldn’t give air to two months ago.
Late last year, as Republicans rushed their tax bill to passage, it was roundly abused in the press and widely disliked by the public. Why? Liberal commentators and mainstream reporters argued that it was unpopular because Americans hate corporate tax cuts.
Many conservatives posited that it was unpopular because people didn’t believe it was a tax cut for the average taxpayer. We said the public would like it the moment they knew it was a tax cut. We were right, it seems.
By a slim 51 to 46 percent, most Americans approve of the tax cut, the New York Times reported over the weekend. Approval was only 46 percent last month, and was a dismal 37 percent when the bill passed in December. Other polls at the time showed even lower approval of the bill.
Back when people hated the tax bill, only 1 in 6 voters said they expected a tax cut, while twice as many expected a tax increase. They were wrong, of course. So, why were they wrong?
First off, the news media, which clearly opposed the tax hike, fooled them into thinking it was only a tax cut for the wealthy and for corporations. “It does not help individuals who are below $100,000,” CNBC’s Ron Insana said. “In fact, it probably doesn’t help individuals who are below $200,000, given the analysis we’ve seen thus far. It is not a middle-class tax cut.”
Relentlessly, reporters and Democratic partisans spread a message that wasn’t true — that this was a tax hike for middle-class families and a tax cut for the wealthy. Liberal reporters defended this framing because the bill’s middle-class tax breaks expire in 2027, at which point, if nothing is done, taxes will go up because the bill’s new, slower, inflation measure is permanent. But this excuse was bogus, and their message clearly misled people. Our own poll found that 33 percent of voters believed the bill would hike taxes for most middle-class families in the short-term, while only 28 percent knew it would cut taxes for most middle-class families.
The liberal media did their own viewers a disservice here, because a majority of Democrats believed this lie about the bill, while vast majority of Republicans voiced the true opinion.
Reporters claimed that the public’s dislike for the bill came not from a misperception, but from an accurate perception that the bill is mostly about helping Big Business and rich folk. “The vast proportion of the benefits of this tax bill flow to people who own businesses and to businesses themselves,” New York Times reporter Nick Confessore said on MSNBC at the time. “I think the reason that people are opposed to this bill, because they understand intuitively it’s mostly not for them.”
The media can’t get the entire blame: The rushed and non-transparent way in which the bill was crafted and passed also probably led to distrust of the bill, along with Congress’s and Trump’s broad unpopularity.
So, what’s changed now? Many people received a bigger paycheck in February because Uncle Sam’s bite was smaller. Suddenly, the public understood who had been telling the truth and who hadn’t.
That’s the very likely reason that public opinion has swung to the positive. What’s more, some employers only changed withholding on the late February paycheck, meaning the latest poll includes some people who haven’t even seen their tax breaks yet. Expect approval to go significantly above 50 percent soon.
Then, maybe the major media will reconsider their assumption that the public is either worried about the effects of new inflation measures in 2027, or dislikes tax cuts if they think other people get bigger tax cuts.
It turns out people like tax cuts, even if some rich people and the profitable corporations also get tax cuts.
