As the House prepares to vote Thursday on its tax reform bill, a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds almost three in 10 Americans (28%) view tax reform as a top priority for President Trump and Congress.
That’s significantly fewer than the share that say the same about reauthorizing funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (62%), hurricane recovery funding (61%), stabilizing the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces (48%) and addressing the prescription painkiller epidemic (43%). Two immigration-related issues – strengthening controls to limit who enters the country (35%) and passing legislation to allow the Dreamers to legally stay (34%) – also rank higher, while a similar share (29%) say repealing the Affordable Care Act is a top priority. …
In a tweet Monday, President Trump called on Congress to end the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which requires most Americans to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty and has long been the least popular provision in the law. While the House tax reform bill does not currently address the mandate, key Republican senators said Tuesday that they will include such a provision in their version of the bill.
The new poll finds that most Americans (55%) initially support eliminating the mandate as part of tax reform, while four in 10 (42%) oppose it. Most Republicans (73%) and independents (58%) support ending the mandate, while most Democrats (59%) oppose it.
These views are malleable, with about a third of supporters (representing a fifth of the public overall) switching to oppose the mandate’s repeal when presented with facts and arguments about who is impacted and potential consequences of its repeal. CONT.
Kaiser Family Foundation
