The FINANCIAL — Forty-four percent (44%) of U.S. voters still expect their taxes to increase under President Obama, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Just nine percent (9%) think their taxes will go down, and 39% expect them to stay the same.
The week President Obama took office in late January 2008, only 31% expected a tax hike while he was in office. Since then, that concern has risen as high as 48%.
Nineteen percent (19%) say tax increases help the economy, but 58% disagree and think they hurt economically.
By contrast, 59% believe tax cuts help the economy, and only 17% say they hurt. Voters have consistently for years viewed tax cuts as more beneficial to the economy than tax increases.
The Political Class sees it differently, however. While 73% of Mainstream voters think tax increases hurt the economy, the plurality (48%) of the Political Class believe they are good for the economy. Similarly, 63% of Mainstream voters say tax cuts help the economy, but those in the Political Class are closely divided on the question.
The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on July 26-27, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Sixty-four percent (64%) of all voters believe government spending will go up under the Obama administration, while only seven percent (7%) expect spending to decrease. One-in-four voters (25%) expects government spending to stay about the same.
Those results have fluctuated little since Obama took office, but the number that expects government spending to increase is down from the mid-70s last summer following the $787-billion economic stimulus plan and bailouts for the financial sector and the auto industry. When Obama first took office in January of last year, 63% expected government spending to go up during his term.
Only 28% believe increased government spending is good for the economy. Fifty-two percent (52%) believe increased government spending is bad for the economy, while 12% say it has no impact.
By a 69% to 15% margin, voters believe cutting taxes is a better way to create jobs than more government spending.
Seventy-five percent (75%) say the unwillingness of politicians to reduce government spending is more to blame for current state budget crises than the unwillingness of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.
Men are slightly more likely than women to believe both personal taxes and government spending will rise during the Obama years.
While a majority (52%) of Mainstream voters (52%) expect their taxes to go up during Obama’s term, 58% of those in the Political Class think taxes will stay about the same.
The number of voters who view the issue of Taxes as Very Important has jumped 10 points from May to its highest level ever in Rasmussen Reports tracking.
Voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on nine out of the 10 key issues. On the issue of taxes, voters trust Republicans over Democrats, 52% to 36%.
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