POLLING & PUNDITS AGREE: REFORMING THE RIGGED TAX SYSTEM TO INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE, HEALTHCARE, CHILDCARE, EDUCATION & GREEN ENERGY IS WIDELY & WILDLY POPULAR

(Washington, D.C.) President Biden’s bold plan to raise $3.6 trillion through fairer taxes on  the wealthy and corporations to help pay for improved infrastructure, childcare, healthcare, education, green energy, and more is both good policy and good politics.   

Numerous polls released recently show strong support for all three elements of Biden’s tax-and-investment agenda:  the Made in America Tax Plan, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan.  Those polls also found big majorities back specific, key parts of that agenda: increasing the corporate tax rate and raising taxes on people who make more than $400,000 a year.

Reporters and pundits have begun to notice this broad popular support for tax fairness and public investment and how it provides an opportunity for Democrats to go on offense rather than play defense: 

• Dan Pfeiffer (5/12/21): “The idea that Biden’s proposals to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy are a political liability flies in the face of all of the polling as well as basic common sense.” 
• NEW YORK TIMES (5/5/21): “A wide range of polls now show broad public support for tax increases on high earners. A Pew Research poll last week found that Americans were much more likely to be upset that the wealthy and corporations did not pay ‘their fair share’ in taxes than to be upset about the size of their own tax bills.

“‘On taxes, Biden has flipped the script on Republicans,’ said Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago who worked in the Obama and Clinton administrations and is in line for an ambassadorship under Mr. Biden. ‘Especially since the Biden tax plan is popular with the G.O.P. base. Biden knows this and is taunting them head on.’”

• POLITICO (5/17/21): “There’s already some evidence that Democrats can prevail by being blunt about tax burdens designed to fall on the wealthy, according to John Anzalone, a top pollster for the Biden campaign in 2020. Anzalone said Biden forcefully countered Trump’s false claims on Democrats’ plans to raise taxes, changing his focus to those making over $400,000 — winning the White House in the process.”
• AXIOS (4/11/21): “The top pollster for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is advising the White House to do something that often makes Democrats nervous: Talk loudly and proudly about raising taxes on the rich.”
• BLOOMBERG (4/8/21): “The White House views Republican attacks on President Joe Biden’s proposal to use corporate tax hikes to pay for a vast infrastructure program as a losing argument in the battle for public opinion, aides and allies of the administration say. … Biden and his team are confident, however, that they’re on the winning side of the debate.” 

“You wouldn’t think you’d need polls to tell you average Americans want the rich and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes and the federal government to invest in services that improve the lives of working families,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “But the polls are in, and they confirm the obvious. Democrats now just have to brush aside the feeble Republican complaints, lean hard into the issue and watch their personal popularity grow.”