Why Don't Most Americans "Know" They're Getting a Tax Cut?

Republican leaders insist that once people start seeing the benefits, their views on the taxes will turn around.

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The rush succeeded, defying the widespread conventional wisdom that passing legislation by the end of the year was impossible. But while it solved some political problems, it created others. First, there's been little time for anyone to understand what's in the bill, much less how it will affect their own pocketbooks. It's hard to blame ordinary Americans: Even Republicans involved in the drafting don't understand it. On Tuesday, HuffPost's Matt Fuller asked 18 members before he was able to get one to name the brackets in the new bill; House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady said he knew them but wouldn't say what they were. Senator Bob Corker, accused of flipping to support the bill after a provision was added that would personally benefit him, defended himself by saying he hadn't read the bill. If the people who passed the bill haven't read it and can't understand it, it's no wonder that the public doesn't either.

Another consequence of the contracted legislative process was that the bill contained, at various times, a range of improbable or politically ill-advised provisions. This included, for example, eliminating the ability to deduct taxes paid to state and local governments, a provision that would have slammed graduate students, and another that would have eliminated a deduction for teachers who purchase classroom supplies. The latter two of these ideas encountered harsh pushback and were ultimately dropped from the final bill, while the final bill opted for a $10,000 cap on the state-and-local tax deduction. The focus on these provisions and others like them hurt the bill's approval and fostered the impression among various parts of the populace that they might be punished rather than rewarded by the new tax code.

Though Democrats could not stop the bill, their messaging, much maligned in recent months, won the day. They were successfully able to convince the public that the bill was geared toward giving corporations a huge, permanent tax cut, while giving individuals only a temporary one; and that the benefits of the bill would accrue overwhelmingly to wealthy taxpayers. This message had the virtue of being true, and it drowned out the GOP message of a tax cut for nearly everyone, at least in the immediate term. In the NBC/WSJ poll, respondents were correctly able to say that wealthy Americans and corporations would pay lower taxes, but pluralities believed that both their own families and middle-class families in general would actually pay more.