Poll: Americans Would Rather the Next President Get Some Jobs Up in This Piece Rather Than Stick the Rich with Higher Taxes

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Surely most people wouldn't mind if the 1% were paying a little bit more in taxes but when compared to other issues, Gallup found that it's a pretty low priority:

Creating good jobs, reducing corruption in the federal government, and reducing the federal budget deficit score highest when Americans rate 12 issues as priorities for the next president to address. Americans assign much less importance to increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and dealing with environmental concerns. 

You might be thinking, "Oh, this is just a bunch of Romney fanboys that feel this way." Well…yes! But actually Obama supporters are not that keen on tax increases either when it comes to Presidential priorities:

Obama and Romney supporters differ most on healthcare, dealing with environmental concerns, increasing taxes on the wealthy, and education. All of these are much higher priorities for Obama supporters than for Romney supporters. The deficit is the only issue that has a large party difference with Romney supporters saying it is more important. Although there is a large difference in the relative importance of dealing with environmental concerns and increasing taxes on wealthy Americans, these issues are the lowest priorities for both Romney and Obama supporters.

Pretty interesting findings. Just don't expect Democrats to stop using higher taxes as a political football.

Americans Want Next President to Prioritize Jobs, Corruption [Gallup via TaxProf]

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This Tax Reform Stuff Can Wait

[I]f we are going to make real progress, we can’t fixate on every overhyped, half-baked tax slogan that comes along. Sooner or later we must get back to basics. Here’s the main question: Should taxes be cut, raised, or reformed without changing overall revenue? The answer is that taxes should be cut in the short term, raised after we are clearly out of our cyclical downturn, and then reformed only after we have settled on the magnitude of tax increases needed for deficit reduction. [Martin Sullivan]

(UPDATE 2) Bernie Sanders Didn’t Convince Too Many People (Pretty Much No One!)

~ Update includes clarification on vote tally and addition to first paragraph. ~ Update 2 includes finally vote tally.

Despite Friday’s epic speech by Bernie Sanders, the Senate passed elected to finish debate on the tax cut/unemployment compromise this afternoon to set up the final vote before it moves on to the House.


At 4:12 ET, the vote was 62-7 with Sanders, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Tom Udall (D-NM) (CSPAN originally showed Tom as voting “no” and has now disappeared), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Kirsten Gillabrand (D-NY) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) voting “no.”

If you’ve got nothing better to do, you can watch the live feed here.

UPDATE, circa 5:00: Vote is 73-10 with John Ensign (R-NV), Mark Udall (D-CO), Kay Hagan, (D-NC), Carl Levin (D-MI) voting “no.”

UPDATE 2, circa 6:30: Finally vote of 83-15.