[A new CBS] poll finds that 53 percent of Americans want the Bush-era tax cuts extended only for households earning less than $250,000 per year. That roughly matches the proposal put forth by the White House, which wants to extend the cuts only for incomes less than $250,000 for families and $200,000 for individuals.Just 26 percent of Americans say they support extending the cuts for all Americans, even those earning above the $250,000 level, which is the GOP proposal.
A little over one percent of Americans make more than $250,000. Twenty-five percent just think that their tax money should further subsidize those who need it least.
John Rogers in 2005.
John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is —
Tyrone: 27%.
John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
Pretty much.
Epicurus
I fear that figure may be a trifle low these days, but I wholly support the conclusion. And so many of that 27% vote….arrrrggggghhhhhh. P.S. John Rogers is a very smart man.
srv
Tim, it’s Friday. All I care about now is beer. You could even do wine or a resveratol update.
Nick
My concern is how many of those 53% are actively involved in stating their position and how many are just like “meh, I support this, but whatever”
The 26% are sure actively involved. That skews the numbers.
As much as I railed on the left, even MoveOn, they tried yesterday, I’m happy they did. It’s the people of New York City who walked on by and went on their merry way pretending that this wasn’t an issue who really piss me the fuck off.
EDIT: I think maybe my concerns might be answered by the 20% who said they didn’t know, but that still puts at 53-47, oddly enough almost equal to Obama-McCain election results
Triassic Sands
The “fact” that only 53% want to end the tax cuts for the wealthy is a sure sign of just how hopeless this country is.
Vacuum at the top. Vacuum in the middle. Vacuum at the bottom. It seems like we can’t achieve 3rd World status fast enough.
S V
Strangely enough, isn’t that the level of Palin’s enthusiastic supporters?
nitpicker
It’s true!
Poll: 27 percent of Americans doubt Obama’s birthplace
Haaretz poll: 27% of Israelis think Obama is anti-Semitic
Triassic Sands
@Nick:
In the November 2 election, Washington State voters defeated a ballot initiative to create a modest state income tax on the state’s wealthiest residents. The vote was 2-1 against the measure in the state with the most regressive tax system in the country.
The new tax would have helped greatly in getting the state’s fiscal house in order and would have prevented draconian cuts in funding for education and health care for the poor and disabled. Instead, the voters chose to impose a requirement on the legislature for a 2/3 supermajority to raise taxes and let the wealthy continue to pay to a smaller share of their income relative to the middle class and poor than anywhere else in the US.
“Meh” indeed.
fucen tarmal
the problem is, when you tell them that extending the tax cuts for those making less that 250k is the obama plan, and the tax cuts for the rich is the republican plan, the support for the the democratic compromise with ourselves, plan shrinks, and the crazies add the idiots to their core, they become an unstoppable 40some percent majority.
Nick
@Triassic Sands: Interestingly, Oregon PASSED a tax hike on the wealthy a year ago.
yeah, Washington surprised me. I didn’t expect it to pass, but 2-1, wow. Did it even pass in Seattle?
Chief Brodie
Christine O’Donnell got 40% of the vote in my state.
Yeah, I don’t want to think about it either. I have to drive around here.
Nick
@Triassic Sands: Interestingly, Oregon PASSED a tax hike on the wealthy a year ago.
yeah, Washington surprised me. I didn’t expect it to pass, but 2-1, wow. Did it even pass in Seattle?
KCinDC
The crazification factor is higher nowadays. Christine O’Donnell got 40%, and I don’t think Delaware is inherently any crazier than Illinois.
beltane
I know some of those people in the 26% category. They sincerely think they’re just like Donald Trump because they live in a double-wide.
Nick
@fucen tarmal:
I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but I’m pretty sure there’s another 20% or so who may be part of the 53%, but will vote Republican anyway because of “teh gay” or whatever
beltane
@KCinDC: In Christine O’Donnell’s case it could be a matter of 27% crazy + 13% lonely middle aged men hoping to get lucky with their new senator, constituent services and all that.
fasteddie9318
So, I mean, the upshot is we’re all fucked, right?
Chuck Butcher
WA didn’t surprise me being their southern neighbor for over 20 years and having lived there a couple times. M66 in OR had tough sledding and OR’s income tax code was ridiculously regressive, in fact still is. The saving grace is no sales tax, though I’d damned sure the new crop of Republicans will try that once again. Naturally they hate M66.
BGK
Yeahbut yeahbut yeahbut…
Last night, I turned to MSNBC a few minutes early to get my daily marching orders from Komrade Keef, and Tweety was still on. He said that Americans didn’t want to penalize the rich because they themselves thought they could be rich someday. He cited a poll that said 43% wanted to end the $250000+ extra tax break, and 40% didn’t. That wasn’t a “homer,” but only “a bunt.” That extending all the tax breaks was the only fair thing.
Are you saying Tweety was wrong? I thought the only person smarter than Tweety was Bob Costas?
(also…half of those 27% must be infesting the open forum on a non-political site I frequent)
Nick
@BGK:
I think he’s right, but I don’t think that leads them to support tax cuts for the rich, it just leads them to be apathetic about it.
Thoroughly Pizzled
I wonder if anyone wants to extend the tax cuts only for the rich.
Hey, there was a poll a while back showing that ~1% of Americans thought that Obama was JEWISH.
joe from Lowell
Atrios used to call it the BTKWBMNF Number: the % of Americans who would approve of George Bush’s performance as President if he were to bind, torture, and kill Wilford Brimley during halftime of Monday Night Football.
It’s right about 26-28%.
CalD
That’s Mister Rogers to you, buddy. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)
Anyway, the problem is, that ~27% accounts for over half of today’s Republican party.
iriedc
Tim F. –You dug out one of my favorite quotes about Alan Keyes. I remember calling my brother who lived in IL in 2004 to ask him about this Obama dude, because we ( the US) clearly needed whoever was running against Alan Keyes to win. He assured me that Obama was OK.
BTW–in 1988 MD Senate Election Keyes got 38% of the votes against Paul Sarbanes & the 1992 MD Senate Election he got 29% against Barbara Mikulski. So that would be 26% of crazy with up to 12% “other” making up the Republican base in general elections? Hmmm….
Tonal Crow
Is our Democrats listening?
Joe Max
@Triassic Sands: It seems like we can’t achieve 3rd World status fast enough.
I think we’ll end up a huge Australia, but with nukes and the world’s largest military.
Better learn to speak Chinese.
Suffern ACE
What if we just let all the gd tax cuts expire and hope for the best. Shut down the government and call it back when we need it. Our deliberative bodies don’t make decisions anyway.
jcricket
@Nick: From what I’ve seen, yes. Around 60% voted for it. But we were swamped by the rest of the state.
At this point I really think there’s no alternative but to start supporting laws that say counties can receive no more from the state than they put in, and states no more from the fed than they put in.
I know, this fucks over the poor (who vote Democrat) in all the red states, but mainly it would make it clear to all the red staters (and rural recipients) that it is the urbanites subsidizing the rural/red state lifestyle, not the other way around. Let’s see the rural infrastructure crumble, the hospitals go away, postage costs skyrocket, rural telecom go away (and wireless costs go up). I’m tired of arguing with people who have so little grasp of the facts that they get things exactly backwards, and are simultaneously taking this country backwards/down the drain.
In related news, I love the miracle of Texas (low taxes, low services, supposedly great growth) and how they now have a budget deficit the size of California (but with zero chance of making it up).
Viva BrisVegas
@Joe Max:
You wish.
fasteddie9318
@Joe Max:
If Australia had nukes and a much bigger military, they wouldn’t be Australia. I don’t think there’s any chance this country goes out that gracefully.
fucen tarmal
@joe from Lowell:
i didn’t support george bush, at all, on much of anything, but bind, torture, kill, wilford brimley, during halftime no less? i don’t need a special password, or even worry about getting cheeto dust on the remote control.
i can’t say i would be for or against this plan had it been proposed, but i would be willing to listen.
Comrade Luke
@jcricket:
Basically, any time you hear talk of a “miracle”…like Ireland, for example…SELL!
It’s just such b.s.
Tattoosydney
@Joe Max:
@Viva BrisVegas:
What s/he said.
Suffern ACE
@fasteddie9318: We haven’t exactly been graceful before. Why would we start now?
Triassic Sands
@Nick:
Seattle may have, but its county, King County, voted 55-45 against. The only county in the entire state where the measure passed was San Juan County (the San Juan Islands). In my county, which has plenty of low income people, the margin was almost identical to the statewide margin. In 2008, the poverty rate in this county was more than 2% greater than in the state as a whole, and more than 4% higher than King County.
I just checked the final, final results and the final, final margin was 64.15% – 35.85%, so not quite 2 to 1.
Washington has a Democratic governor (spineless), two Democratic senators, 6 Democratic representatives to 3 Republicans (old congress — it will be 5-4 in January), and both houses of the state legislature have Democratic majorities. The state has the most regressive tax system in the country and November 2 made it worse.
In 2002, Alabamans elected a right wing Republican and former US representative, Bob Riley, who allegedly had never voted for a tax increase in his political career. After looking at the state of Alabama’s finances, Riley decided the largest tax increase in state history was necessary. The legislature passed the increase and sent it to the people as a referendum. The Washington tax initiative would have been paid only by the wealthy. The Alabama increase was supposedly significantly progressive, but not exclusive to them. The referendum lost 67-33.
At the time, I read a newspaper story that said that even the poorest voters had voted against the referendum. For their efforts they were thanked with draconian cuts to state programs for the poor. The same thing is on the table for Washington. One possible cut I read about was the elimination of prescription drug coverage for Medicaid recipients — because we all know that prescription medications are just wasteful luxuries that poor people can pay for themselves. For example, all they have to do is (illegally) sell their food stamp funds for cash. Then, they can use the cash to buy their medications. Of course, lots of medications cost more per month than the maximum food stamp allowance for a single person, which is something like $210, I think. Apparently, the USDA considers prescription drugs with catsup to be vegetables, so the poor can continue to enjoy high quality nutrition while simultaneously getting the meds.
Neldob
The margaritas are good. So are the factoids.
Southern Beale
Yes. For chrissakes what have I been saying for the past year? 25% of the voting public is batshit insane, on drugs, mentally handicapped, or too fucking clueless to tie their goddamned shoes.
I mean, cripes. Look at any survey about the Teanuts or whatever, it’s always 25% of the respondents who agree with them.
jhe
I have always loved that crazification post. I think what it overlooks is a corresponding lazification. The 27% are the ones who are both nuts and motivated. That’s pretty much what it took to vote for Keyes in a year in which the Republican party in Illinois was completely and embarrassingly peeing itself in public.
By and large a big chunk of the remaining 73% is made of up of the lazy. The beauty of the Tea Party is that gets people used to the idea of crazy people in politics to the point where they almost don’t notice it. Once you stop noticing it as unusual it doesn’t panic you into voting. The Republican strategy is really about getting crazy people in a lather (ad who better to motivate the crazy than one of their own) and keeping sane but lazy people distracted and calm.
Comrade Luke
@Triassic Sands: If it wasn’t for the Capitol Hill/downtown core we’d probably have a few more Republicans representing Washington state in both houses of congress.
Gregoire drives me nuts; I hope Inslee runs in ’12.
Triassic Sands
@Comrade Luke:
I would welcome an Inslee candidacy.
Gregoire, like many Democrats today, doesn’t seem to stand for anything concrete. Getting elected is the goal and after that occupying space without getting in trouble or making people angry at her consumes 100% of her time. I don’t think she believes in anything apart from her own electoral success. I’m not sure what she is saving her political capital for, but I assume someone told her she can take it with her.
Even so, Gregoire isn’t really any worse than Gary Locke, who as far as I can tell ran for governor because he didn’t have anything else to do and once in office he decided that not doing anything at all was what he was born to do.* Both he and Gregoire will leave office after eight years without having made a significant difference in the lives of any of Washington’s residents, except that Gregoire may have to take partial credit for the suffering that seems inevitable over the next few years.
Actually, Locke’s current role as Cheerleader for Commerce seems to fit him pretty well.
Yutsano
@Comrade Luke:
My wet dream would be for Inslee to take over for either Murray or Cantwell should either decide to retire. He’d make a pretty fucking awesome Senator.
patrick II
Like many elemental laws, the original post was so right-on that it has been used to demonstrate this voting pattern for much otherwise unexplainable voting behaviour. But, however much I love John Rogers, every time I read the original blog post I wish Tyrone would get some credit.
Dollared
@triassic,
There’s a pretty simple explanation for how Washington voters behave. For 100 years they were Alaska, before there was an Alaska. That means two things: 1) the feds subsidized everything out here – roads, ports, military spending, bridges – to make sure that this corner of the US was nailed down. and 2) there are still plenty of end-of-the-roaders out in those hills, who think they still can live off the land and don’t need no society or federal govt.
I knew a teacher in Sultan who told me that in 1990, 20% of all the school age children in the district were simply not registered. Not home schooled, nothing. They just lived up in the hills.
And remember when the contractors fucked up and the I-90 bridge sank? Within 90 days the feds had ponied up $150M for a new, bigger stronger bridge. Out here we just don”t like to pay our own way.
DonBoy
I’m forced to point out that 27% is also just about what the obviously-impaired Alvin Greene got a couple of months ago. Which suggests to me that what looks like “crazy” from the outside might look like “party loyalty” from the inside — more so when the 27% guy obviously isn’t going to win, so you don’t actually have to worry about putting a mental case in the Senate.
Pongo
“Just 26 percent of Americans say they support extending the cuts for all Americans, even those earning above the $250,000 level, which is the GOP proposal.”
This is, like most reports on the middle class tax cut legislation, misleading. The middle class tax cut will be for all Americans. The cuts apply to income made up to $250,000, so the wealthy will also benefit from those cuts. The way these polls and the media frame the issue makes it sound like the choice is all or nothing for the wealthy and that is just not true. Why is it so hard for the media to frame these issues more accurately?
Triassic Sands
@Joe Max:
We will have the most expensive military, but the largest will belong to China. The difference will be they will be able to afford their military.
Calouste
@Pongo:
The media are some of the people for whom the tax cuts will be limited, and for more than a few of them, $250,000 is spare change.
Calouste
@DonBoy:
Alvin Green was running against Jim DeMint, so it was pretty much a toss up who the most obviously-impaired of the two was.
bob h
And just how many of those $250+ people live in the Red Zone? It seems the top priority of Republicans is to give comfort to places like Manhattan and Santa Monica, the bluest of the blue.
Brachiator
Wow. I was just looking at the Washington tax initiative voting results. The initiative failed in every county (with the exception of San Juan island).
The spin is typical crap like this from the Heritage Foundation:
But did any media organization do substantive interviews with actual voters to find out why they voted against the measure?
The results might tell you a lot about why people support the Republican tax plan even though they clearly will not benefit from it.
Name: Mark
Would Harry Truman have done this? I understand that there always, in the end, has to be a compromise, and that liberals are never, ever going to get all that they want. That’s the nature of politics. The problem is that Obama is not pulling out all the stops to get the most progressive final deal possible. He’s not out there on the stump giving the Republicans heat for their unpopular positions. I think that both Carter and Clinton, moderates though they were on domestic policy, would have fought harder for, and achieved, a more progressive final settlement had they been faced with a situation like this.
Elli Davis
The focus of all these tax debates are in the wrong place, because the new Congress will have until December 31, 2011 to debate and finally decide what the 2011 tax rates will be. I assume that the real problem is that the alternate minimum tax provisions for your 2010 taxes have not been changed. Since the main progressive thrust of any income tax rise is to capture more tax dollars form the wealthy, not small business owners.