Poll: Huge majority of Americans support taxing the rich

[Playinghardball]

Source: Raw Story
By Stephen C. Webster

As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote down legislation that would raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to pay for a jobs plan that most economists believe would stop the recession, a new poll has surfaced showing just how out of touch those Senators are with mainstream America.

According to figures released by Bloomberg and The Washington Post on Tuesday, eight in 10 Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support raising taxes on households earning over $250,000 a year. A full 81 percent of Democrats were behind the plan, along with 67 percent of independents and 53 percent of Republicans.

That’s a huge leap in support from December 2010, when a Bloomberg poll found that just 59 percent favored extending the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy Americans. President Obama has since vowed to normalize tax rates between the upper and middle classes, highlighting the dispairity in the percentage paid by lower income people as compared to the top earners.


Similarly large majorities also supported major reductions in defense spending, which is far and away the largest discretionary spending the government is engaged in today. Sixty percent of Democrats were in favor of cutting defense, along with 58 percent of independents. Just 34 percent of Republicans favored this course of action.

More at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/11/poll-huge-majority-of-americans-support-taxing-the-rich/

[closeupready]

1. These polls are fun to read, but just as essentially useless as voting is.

We vote for people who take office and then do what their campaign donors tell them to do, or who do the bidding of special interests, rather than voters.

So it really doesn't matter if 95% of Americans say such and such. What matters is what Congress' campaign financiers say.

[Stuart G]

2. proud to kick this ...

[slackmaster]

3. Everybody supports taxing the rich

Until you define "rich" to include them.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Oh they are in touch with somebody...

the elites they serve