Keller @ Large: GOP Tax Reform Sales Pitch Intensifies
BOSTON (CBS) - "This country is starting to rock with our businesses coming back, it's starting to really rock," President Trump told a friendly crowd in Florida yesterday, as he and other Republicans intensify their public relations campaign on behalf of the GOP tax reform plan. Today in New Hampshire, his daughter Ivanka was doing the same along with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
But new national polling by the Wall Street Journal and NBC shows they have a long way to go to close that sale.
Only 27% call the tax cuts a "good idea," while 36% say they're a "bad idea" and the rest have yet to form an opinion.
Events like the Ivanka Trump road show are part of a political battle to sway those undecideds.
"Businesses are recognizing the benefit and taking that and reinvesting those benefits back into the American worker and the American workforce in the form of bonuses and minimum wage increases," she told the NH audience.
But amid a flood of early publicity over those one-time bonuses and wage hikes a Reuters poll in January found only two percent of US adults had seen any benefits. And so far it seems it's the Democratic message on the tax cuts that's catching on.
A majority of voters tell the WSJ/NBC pollsters they see the tax cuts increasing the deficit and disproportionately benefiting the rich, while barely four in ten think the plan will boost the economy and help average Americans.
"You see what's happened to your wallet?" said the president in Florida. "I mean, you're getting a lot more money in your weekly or monthly checks then you ever thought possible."
Not yet they aren't, because other than recent cuts in withholding, most of the tax reform benefits aren't expected to show up until tax day next year.
