Republicans have done more this week than just pass a deeply corrupt tax cut that will disproportionately benefit the nation’s wealthiest citizens and loot the national treasury — they’ve also turned the politics of tax cuts upside down.
The thing about tax cuts is that, generally speaking, everyone loves them. Voters get to pay less to Uncle Sam and politicians can crow about how they returned money to hard-working taxpayers.
But it’s not playing out that way this time. According to a CNN poll, 55 percent of Americans oppose the GOP’s tax cut bill, and only 33 percent support it. An NBC/WSJ poll offers a good hint as to why: Sixty-three percent of Americans say corporations and the wealthy will benefit the most from the tax bill. Only 7 percent say the middle class will.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about all this is that Democrats — even in ruby-red states like West Virginia, North Dakota, and Indiana — felt absolutely no pressure to vote yes on this bill. They appeared to feel no perceptible fear that they’d be attacked for opposing a tax cut. Rather, Democrats practically seemed to relish voting against it.
It’s not easy to craft a bill that massively cuts taxes and is this unpopular. You almost have to give Republicans credit for pulling it off.
So while the GOP’s tax bill is a raging dumpster fire on fiscal policy grounds, the politics of it aren’t likely to be much better. It’s possible that as Americans see a slight uptick in their paycheck or get a marginally larger refund in April, they will have a rosier view of the tax measure, but recent history is ominous for Republicans.
Take, for example, what happened in 2009 and 2010 when Democrats cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. Even though individuals received a $400 tax break and families got back $800, fewer than 1 in 10 Americans knew about it. A third thought their taxes had actually gone up.
Granted, these tax cuts happened in the midst of an economic downturn and many Americans saw their state taxes rise at the same time. But with wage growth today remaining relatively tepid and health insurance costsrising faster than wages and inflation, few are likely to notice the slightly extra money in their pockets — if they even receive that. Moreover, many may see the benefits going to wealthy Americans as more than outweighing the meager crumbs they are receiving.
Quite simply, the negative perception of the GOP tax bill will probably endure.
That’s a real problem for Republicans, because the party desperately needs a political boost. From every available metric — including generic congressional polls that give Democrats a double-digit advantage — the 2018 midterm elections are looking like a potential bloodbath for Republicans. The GOP tax bill was supposed to blunt the Democrat’s momentum. Republicans had convinced themselves that they needed to pass something, anything, in order to go back to voters with a legislative accomplishment. But what if the tax bill hurts more than it helps? What if, at best, the tax bill is a political push for Republicans? They would still be looking at massive losses next November.
Beyond the electoral wave that appears to be materializing for Democrats, there’s the plight of Republicans in states like California, New York, and New Jersey, where voters will see their state and local tax deduction reduced — and their taxes, in effect, will go up. Every congressional Republican in those states is now at even greater electoral risk than they were just a week ago.
It didn’t have to be this way. Republicans certainly could have passed a bill that was revenue neutral and that gave most of its benefits to the middle class. But the desire to pay off their donors and punish blue-state voters was seemingly too great. That’s a decision that may very well boomerang against them. So while Republicans may be celebrating now, there’s a more than reasonable chance they won’t feel the same way a year from today.
Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71.
