Poll on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security cuts vs. GOP tax law hike

Donald Trump and Mitch
McConnell
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• The federal deficit hit $779 billion in fiscal year
  2018, the highest since 2012.
• Republicans have suggested that the US needs to cut
  entitlements — Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security — to get
  the deficit under control.
• But most Americans would rather reverse the GOP tax law
  and raise revenue to deal with the deficit rather than make
  cuts, according to a new poll.
• More Republicans, even, would rather reverse the tax
  cuts than make entitlement cuts.

 

Americans would much rather deal with the ballooning federal
deficit by reversing the GOP’s biggest accomplishment of
President Donald Trump’s term, rather than go along with the
Republican plan to address the debt, a new poll shows.

According to the Marist/NPR/PBS poll, 60% of Americans would
rather reverse the GOP tax law to deal with the growing deficit.
Just 21% of Americans would rather make cuts to entitlement
programs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

That does not align with recent rhetoric from Republican leaders
on how to deal with the federal deficit — which, according to a
recent Treasury Department report,
hit $779 billion in fiscal year 2018.

GOP leaders, most recently
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have said that

cuts to entitlement programs are necessary to deal with
the long-term debt problem that was exacerbated by the passage of
the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the GOP’s tax reform law.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the
TCJA will add $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit over the
next decade.

Even a plurality of GOP voters don’t even agree with the party’s
plan to deal with the deficit. According to the poll, 43% of
Republicans said they would prefer to reverse the TCJA to address
the growing debt, while 32% said cutting entitlements was their
preferred method.

The results may be unsurprising given the relative unpopularity
of the GOP tax law. Most Americans
believe that the law primarily benefits wealthier
Americans and corporations, and even
Republican polling shows the law is not a political
winner.

While many GOP lawmakers and Trump administration officials have
long advocated for cuts to entitlement programs, the president
has so far rejected the idea and has promised
not to touch Medicare and Medicaid. Trump’s distaste for the
cuts, along with the fact that Democrats would likely be able to
block any such cuts in the near future, make them unlikely.