Adam N. Michel
Adam N. Michel
As Congress debates how to extend the expiring 2017 Trump tax cuts, a new poll from the Cato Institute suggests the American people support an approach that pairs tax relief with significant spending cuts.
The House and Senate have passed a budget framework to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent, increase spending on immigration and defense, and, if the House has its way, cut as much as $2 trillion in other spending. While the Senate version of the resolution includes no meaningful enforceable spending cuts, fiscal hawks have reported receiving a commitment to pair tax cuts with at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts.
The results from the Cato Institute’s 2025 Fiscal Policy National Survey by Emily Ekins, fielded in collaboration with YouGov, show that respondents across the political spectrum support keeping taxes low by pairing spending cuts with making the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent.
Emily Ekins and Hunter Johnson’s in-depth summaries of the results are available here and here.
I’ve pulled out some of the most striking results from the survey.
Taxes are already too high
Most Americans (55 percent) think their taxes are too high, a view also shared by more than half of Democrats. The same portion of respondents believe they pay more than their fair share in taxes when considering “what you get from the federal government.”
A full 81 percent of Americans say they can’t afford higher taxes next year.
Permanent tax cuts are important
Americans, regardless of political affiliation, want permanent tax cuts. Seventy-five percent agree with the statement, “the 2017 tax cuts should be made permanent because businesses and families need stability of the tax code to plan for the future.” And 74 percent agree that “tax cuts should be made permanent because taxes are already too high.” More than half of “very liberal” respondents also agreed with both statements. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-poll-americans-want-congress-pair-tax-cuts-spending-cuts