New poll shreds GOP's entire doctrine of financing tax cuts for rich by stealing from everyone else

Kerry Eleveld  

Daily Kos Staff

Friday November 2, 2018 · 12:17 PM PDT

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An NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll released Friday offered virtually nothing but bad news for Republicans, the worst of which centers around the tax cuts they passed for the nation's wealthiest. Not only do more Americans consistently oppose the law than support it—with most also saying they haven't benefitted from it—a strong majority of registered voters prefers to roll back the cuts in order to shore up the nation's ballooning deficit.

Fully 60 percent of registered voters said "it was better to roll back the tax cuts passed by Congress than to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," according to NPR. That number includes a plurality of Republicans:

• Reverse tax cut: 43 percent
• Cut SS/Medicare/Medicaid: 32 percent

And strong majorities of both Democrats (80 percent) and independents (58 percent) favor reversing the tax cuts to cutting social programs.

In the strongest possible terms, this poll shreds the GOP's entire economic doctrine of financing tax cuts for the richest Americans by stealing from the nation's neediest to shore up the deficit. The revelation comes on the heels of GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s pitch last week for making cuts to the critical programs just last week in order to reduce the deficit/debt, both of which have ballooned due to the GOP tax law.

On the midterm front, the poll also included troubling news for Republicans that might either prove to be an outlier or could perhaps foreshadow a shift toward Democrats.

• Despite recent news that Trump's approval rating is peaking, his approvals in the NPR poll dropped to 39 percent, down from 41 percent in the same poll earlier this month
• Democrats also expanded their lead over Republicans in the poll’s generic ballot to 10 points, 50-40 percent, a sizable increase from the their 6-point lead earlier this month

The poll was conducted Oct. 21-23, so well after Trump began plugging the supposed "caravan" crises but before the real scope of the “MAGA bomber” crisis had unfolded.