President Donald Trump and the Republican Party may want their tax reform bill to carry them through the 2018 midterm elections, but a new poll suggests that it isn't making much of an impact on voters.
Fifty-eight percent of American adults believe that Trump's tax bill will primarily help corporations and the wealthy, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Only 13 percent believed that the middle class would be the primary beneficiaries of the tax reform bill, while only two percent could say that they had directly received a raise, bonus or comparable benefits as a result of the legislation. Similarly, 27 percent of respondents believe that the tax reform law will increase their taxes, with 24 percent saying they think it will decrease their tax bracket and 23 percent anticipating that it won't change things for them at all.
While the bill may be broadly unpopular, however, it doesn't seem likely that it will impact either party's fortunes in the midterm elections. Only 9 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of independents said they would be more likely to support Democrats as a result of the tax reform bill, while only 8 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of independents said it would make them more likely to support a Republican.
As the bill was being pushed through, Trump and other Republicans predicted that the legislation's benefits would be so significant that they would convince voters to support it.
"They're going to start seeing the results in February. This bill means more take-home pay. It will be an incredible Christmas gift for hard-working Americans. I said I wanted to have it done before Christmas. We got it done," Trump proclaimed during a public event with congressional Republicans in December.
Economic experts don't share Trump's optimism.
"The biggest losers are probably families kind of in the upper-middle class, that maybe they have a house that costs several hundred thousand dollars and they have a mortgage that they're able to deduct interest payments on on their taxes today," Josh Bivens, Director of Research at the Economic Policy Institute, told Salon in November.
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