#fiscal cliff
We don’t even need Scrooge or the Grinch this year. Washington is ready to ruin everybody’s Christmas over the fiscal cliff.
Bernanke told reporters yesterday that the fiscal cliff, a combination of steep tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in Jan. 1, is already bringing down the already-fragile economy. Businesses aren’t investing and consumers aren’t buying because of the uncertainty of a deal between Republicans and the White House.
And House Speaker John Boehner told his GOP colleagues that they need to be prepared to stay in the nation’s capital — quite possibly until New Year’s Eve — to be able to cast a vote if a budget agreement is struck.
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Poll: Voters want to soak the rich to avoid fiscal cliff.
An American appetite for tax hikes gives President Barack Obama leverage in fiscal cliffnegotiations.
A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll finds that 60 percent of respondents support raising taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year and 64 percent want to raise taxes on large corporations.
Even 39 percent of Republicans support raising taxes on households making more than $250,000. Independents favor such a move by 21 percentage points, 59 to 38 percent.
Only 38 percent buy the GOP argument that raising taxes on households earning over $250,000 per year will have a negative impact on the economy. Fifty-eight percent do not.
“Democrats really have a winning issue here, and we should drive it hard,” said Celinda Lake, the Democratic pollster who helped conduct the bipartisan poll. “We’re in an era now where there’s a lot of cynicism about trickle-down economics.”
So Republican ideas are unpopular — no surprise there. This is pretty much just a continuation of the trend in polling. Obama won reelection, so it’s no surprise most people back his ideas here. The alternate Republican ideas were also Mitt Romney’s ideas.
But that last question is so odd you wonder why they asked it. 75% support “cutting government spending across the board,” which is pretty much the same as going over the fiscal cliff. I suppose it’s so vague that it’s appealing; when you start to get into specifics, spending cuts get a lot more unpopular.
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