Republicans Struggle to Make Tax Cuts a Winning Election Issue

By Sahil Kapur
April 16, 2018, 4:00 AM EDT

Some surveys show majority of voters don’t approve of law

Democrats have framed tax overhaul as giveway to the wealthy

Moments after the Republican tax overhaul passed in the Senate in mid-December, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that if he and his party members couldn’t sell the cuts to the American people, they should find “another line of work.”

Four months later, some GOP lawmakers who hoped the law would save them from defeat may have to start dusting off their resumes.

Some recent polls show that the majority of Americans still don’t support the tax law, despite an uptick in sentiment since the end of 2017. And a special House election in a conservative district of Pennsylvania in March delivered an upset victory to the Democratic candidate, who’d framed the tax cuts as a giveaway to the wealthy.

“If they can’t run on tax cuts in a district Trump won by 20 [points] and win, where can they run on tax cuts and win?” said David Wasserman, House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

After most individual taxpayers finish up their returns this week, all eyes will turn to what the tax code revamp means for next year’s filings and beyond. Part of the Republican party’s problem in selling the tax cuts is that the answer is murky for many. Variables like dependents and itemized deductions can complicate the picture, even though most -- 65 percent -- will see a tax cut in 2018. And even for voters who do see a cut, whether it’s enough to sway their decisions at the ballot box is far from clear.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-16/republicans-struggle-to-make-tax-cuts-a-winning-election-issue