GOP support tax increases—past acts prove.

Anti-tax politics in the United States is often ascribed to an immutable aspect of the American character—either a laudable preference for individual effort or a childish unwillingness to pay bills. But these arguments lack an empirical foundation. In surveys, most Americans report that they are personally willing to pay more in taxes to improve education and healthcare and reduce poverty and homelessness; when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, more Republicans prefer tax increases to benefit cuts. About three-fifths of Americans say they are bothered “a lot” that corporations and the wealthy are not paying their share, compared to a third who say they are bothered “a lot” about the amount of taxes they themselves pay. Plans to tax the rich are consistently popular; they receive extremely high support from Democrats plus substantial support from working-class Republicans. Most low-income Republicans even support the estate tax once they learn it is only the very rich who pay it. Anti-tax hysteria is not a psychological condition of the American people; it is a pathology of American politics.

For at least twenty years, tax cuts have not been popular with voters. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both cut income taxes for the vast majority of Americans, but polling shows that most voters forgot about the breaks they had received long before the next election. When Hillary Clinton and John McCain each proposed a gas tax holiday in 2008, the idea was not popular with voters. The Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act fared even worse; the legislation is remarkable for having been less popular at the time of its passage than the tax increases under Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

Conservative anti-tax rhetoric is not, therefore, tapping into some deep wellspring of popular hatred of taxation. Nonetheless, taxation remains a reliable bogeyman of the Republican Party. This winter, Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott learned this lesson the hard way when he advocated that “all Americans should pay some income tax,” a proposal that would raise taxes predominantly on the poor and working class. Scott may have thought he was safe with such a regressive plan, but he was wrong. He was immediately excoriated by Republican leadership and on Fox News for planning to raise taxes.