Poll: Trump’s health care and tax plans are very, very unpopular

Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are desperately trying to keep their legislative agenda on track, amid intraparty squabbles on health care and taxes plus the political headwinds of the Trump/Russia scandal. Meanwhile, still more data is emerging that their approach to health care isn’t all that popular, and the public doesn’t love their tax plans, either.

Quinnipiac University is out with polling showing the health care bill and the president’s approach to the issue underwater. On top of that, the early contours of Trump’s tax plan are getting dismal reviews. The highlights on health care:

• 66 percent of Americans, including 21 percent of Republicans, disapprove of how Trump is handling health care; 28 percent approve.
• 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the GOP’s health care plan, the American Health Care Act; 21 percent approve.
• 42 percent of Americans think their health insurance costs would go up under the Republican plan; 37 percent think they’d stay the same and 11 percent think they’d go down.
• 75 percent of Americans think it’s a bad idea to let states opt out of the Obamacare regulation that prohibits insurers from charging sick people more than healthy people, which was part of the compromise that helped get the AHCA through the House; 21 percent think it’s a good idea.

The poll’s findings on Trump and the GOP’s tax plan, though it is yet to be fully fleshed out, are equally dim:

• 54 percent of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling taxes and 52 percent disapprove of his tax plan; 34 percent and 30 percent approve, respectively.
• 74 percent of Americans, including 66 percent of Republicans, would disapprove of Trump’s tax plan if it increased the national deficit; some Republican politicians have suggested their tax overhaul does not necessarily need to be deficit-neutral.
• 55 percent of Americans think it’s a bad idea to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent, the top rate under current US law, to Trump’s proposed rate of 15 percent; 39 percent think it’s a good idea.
• 42 percent of Americans think Trump’s plan will not affect them and 31 percent think it will hurt them; 20 percent think it will help them.
• 63 percent of Americans think that the wealthy will benefit most from Trump’s tax plan; 27 percent think the middle class would and 4 percent think it’d be low-income Americans.

Getting a health care bill through the House proved near-impossible, and the Senate still has a lot of work to do to keep that legislation moving. A tax overhaul is likely to be equally contentious. Public opposition on the scale displayed in this poll is going to make it even harder.

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