Americans not buying class warfare snake oil on taxes

What lesson have Democrats drawn from their election “shellacking” five weeks ago?

Class warfare.

That’s right: the liberal Democrat leadership in Congress is convinced that class warfare on taxes is their way out of the political wilderness.

As President Obama tries to find a way to appease his left flank while cutting a deal with Republicans on extending the Bush-era tax cuts, Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer rallied their troops to deny continued tax relief to anyone earning more than $250,000 per year.

Perhaps sensing that Americans no longer define $250,000 a year as “rich,” Schumer unveiled a new scheme worthy of Mike Myers’ villain in Austin Powers movies: no tax relief for those earning more than “one million dollars.” Schumer crowed publicly that he had reams of polling and focus group data showing that this was a good “message” for Democrats to pound on. "This is a fight worth making for a very long period of time,” he said. “Speaking for myself, I’m going keep at this…I think it is high ground politically.”

First of all, it would be uncharitable to criticize Democrats for using poll data to design their economic policy. After their big government agenda was resoundingly repudiated by voters just five weeks ago, they can be forgiven for focus-grouping everything they do from here on out.

The problem is: Schumer’s analysis is wrong, and the San Francisco-Manhattan axis of Democrat leadership in Congress has just led its rank-and-file into yet another political disaster area.

According to a nationwide survey of one thousand voters commissioned by Crossroads GPS, Americans aren’t excited about raising taxes on anyone – even on upper-income taxpayers.  What should be most alarming for the Pelosi-Schumer economic team (and those who take direction from them) is that voters are clearly smarter than the average Washington politician in understanding that tax increases kill jobs, and the best way for Congress to cut the deficit is to reverse its disastrous two-year spending spree.

Raising taxes on upper-income Americans – even those in “million dollar” range – gets tepid support at best. In contrast, three-fourths of likely voters say that raising taxes on upper-income earners will hit small businesses that create jobs. Nearly 80 percent say that raising taxes in the middle of a recession will hurt economic growth. After thinking through the economic consequences, voters in our survey turned against raising taxes on upper-income earners, by as much as an eight-point margin.

Nor is there any good news for self-styled fiscal conservatives in the Democrat Caucus who use the deficit as an excuse for tax hikes. Just 4 percent of voters choose raising taxes as the best option for reducing the deficit, far behind cutting government spending and growing the economy.

Moreover, the voters in our survey support actual plans to cut government spending, not just small government rhetoric. Fully 64 percent of those surveyed support a budget that does not raise taxes but cuts spending down to 2008 levels, including a repeal of ObamaCare and any unspent stimulus and bailout funding.

Want more evidence that Americans aren’t in a class warfare mood? Two of the most popular Bush-era tax cuts that voters want to see extended are capital gains taxes on corporate dividends and interest, and estate taxes – even on estates worth more than Schumer’s magic “one million dollars.”

The reason why voters fired the Democrats in Congress five weeks ago was that they saw them chasing after ideological agendas and spending money recklessly instead of fixing the economy and helping to create jobs.

At a press conference last Friday, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) argued that Tea Partiers should applaud the Democrat party for its “class warfare” (her words) approach to raising taxes. Any guess on whether the Democrats “get it” yet?

Steven Law is director of Crossroads GPS, a conservative advocacy organization.