After Colluding With Trump, Republicans In Congress Deserve Everything The Public Gives Them

Young people don’t seem to like Trump much. A new poll from the Associated Press shows that Americans 34 and under understand that he’s racist, dishonest and “mentally unfit” for office. 33% of people between 15 and 34 approve of Trump’s job performance, significantly lower than the whole population. This younger cohort, which rarely votes— especially not in midterms— claims they will vote in greater numbers in November. But the GOP has other problems than Trump’s sky-high disapprove ratings among young people. Almost no one feels any benefits from that cockamamie tax cut the GOP is counting on to keep them in power.

More than three months after the passage of the GOP’s tax-cut law, new surveys suggest that many people don’t think they are getting bigger paychecks, which could cut into support for Republicans in this fall’s midterm elections.

A CNBC poll this week stated that just 32 percent of working adults reported having more take-home pay due to the new law, a problem for Republicans hoping to run on the measure and the health of the economy in November.

…Tax experts said there are a number of reasons why people might not be reporting seeing an increase in their take-home pay.

One reason is that many taxpayers won’t end up receiving a particularly large tax cut, especially if the benefit is spread out over the course of the year.

For example, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has estimated that people with incomes between $48,600 and $86,100 will, on average, receive a tax cut of $930 for 2018, which is around $35 per pay period if divided equally among 26 pay periods. The group said that people with income of below $25,000 will, on average, get a tax cut of only $60 over the course of the whole year.

“The tax bill just doesn’t provide much benefit to most people,” said Vanessa Williamson, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

The CNBC survey seemed to confirm that result. It showed that people with higher incomes were more likely to notice an increase in take-home pay than low-income individuals— an outcome that Democrats could use against the GOP in their midterm campaign.

…Only a small subset of adults surveyed by CNBC said that they saw their paychecks go up and it was significantly beneficial.

Of those surveyed in the CNBC poll, only 60 percent were employed to begin with. Among those, only 32 percent said that they noticed their income go up as a result of tax changes.

Breaking that group down further, just 38 percent thought the amount their wages went up helped a fair amount or a great deal. That means only 12 percent of employed adults thought the tax plan helped them in a significant way, which amounts to only 7.2 percent of the overall sample.

The poll comes after employers were supposed to have adopted guidance from the IRS that adjusted the amounts withheld from people’s paychecks for federal taxes in light of the new law.

The withholding guidance took into account three key parts of the tax law: the lower rates, larger standard deduction and repeal of personal exemptions. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that 90 percent of wage earners would see more take-home pay due to the guidance.

Conservatives said that GOP lawmakers should do more to highlight the tax law’s benefits.

“The amplification needs to go up. If a congressman is only talking about it once a week, he needs to talk about it twice a week,” said Ryan Ellis, senior tax adviser for the Family Business Coalition.

The Republican National Committee is planning a "week of action" during the week of the April 17 filing deadline to tout the benefits of the new law, according to a spokeswoman.

Also bear in mind that if businesses were seeing Trumpism as a winning formula, they wouldn’t be rushing to, for example, distance themselves from Regime avatars, like Laura Ingraham. Yesterday, CBS News reported that 11 advertisers have joined the boycott against her Fox show. She announced a “sudden” vacation while The Atlantis, Paradise Island resort; Office Depot, Jenny Craig, Hulu, Nutrish, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Wayfair, StitchFix, Nestlé and Johnson & Johnson have all pulled their ads from her show, responding to a flare up between Ingraham and the Parkland survivors. On Wedmnesday she “posted a mocking tweet of high school senior David Hogg, taunting him for not getting into some colleges he had applied to. In response, Hogg tweeted a list of advertisers on Ingraham's show and called on followers to contact them.”