Republican elected officials are promoting their recently passed tax and spending bill as a win for working Americans, but a new survey shows that Americans broadly see it as a win for the wealthy.
About two-thirds of U.S. adults expect the new tax law will help the rich, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Most — about 6 in 10 — think it will do more to hurt than help low-income people. About half say it will do more harm than good for middle-class people and people like them.
Republicans have already begun airing advertisements framing the legislation as a tax cut for all Americans, highlighting new deductions on tips and overtime income. But Democrats have been making the case that the wealthiest Americans will benefit from the legislation, citing cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs.
The new poll indicates that Republicans still have persuading to do. The high price tag may also be turning off some Americans. Trump’s approval rating on government spending has fallen since the spring, according to the new survey, and about 6 in 10 U.S. adults across the political spectrum think the government is spending “too much.”
Americans see little benefit for low-income or middle-class people
Most people have heard at least something about the new law, according to the poll, which found that about two-thirds of U.S. adults have heard or read “a lot” or “some” about it.
Those who know something about the legislation are more likely to believe it favors the wealthy, compared with people who have heard “only a little” or “nothing at all.”
Anaiah Barrow, a 25-year-old single mom from North Carolina who doesn’t identify with a political party, said she’s concerned that the new law will hurt caregivers like her. Barrow — who’s juggling a job, taking care of two young children and pursuing a degree — is concerned about losing access to day care and food stamps.
“It has a really big effect,” Barrow said of the recently passed legislation, which she has learned about on TikTok. “It may not be as a big now, but in the long run it’s going to have that effect — it’s going to hit bad.”
Even many Republicans agree that the wealthy are likely to benefit from the tax and spending law. About half say the law will do more to help the wealthy. A similar percentage say this about middle-class people, while about 4 in 10 Republicans think it will do more to help than hurt low-income people.
Lori Nichols, a 51-year-old caregiver for her elderly mother in Illinois, said the legislation has “very little for the older people and people that are on disability.” Although Nichols is a Republican, she said she didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election and voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
“As far as the tax part goes, it seems to me like (Trump’s) just making the rich richer,” Nichols said.
Republicans are less likely to think they’ll be harmed
Despite the overall sense that wealthy people will be the primary beneficiaries, Democrats and independents are much likelier than Republicans to think the law could harm them personally.
Nathan Hay, a shift service manager at an international dealership that repairs trucks, said he thinks lower-income people might see a “slight increase” in taxes but still supports the bill. “Personally, it’s not helping me a ton,” Hay said, but he believes it will help small businesses, which have been a staple in his own life and his family’s.
About half of Republicans expect the legislation to do more to help “people like you,” compared with about 2 in 10 independents and just 6% of Democrats.
“I’m not a tax accountant, but it sounds as if it would be more beneficial to (people) in the higher tax level,” said Republican Geraldine Putnam, 87, a Trump voter who lives in the rural south.
“It’s not that I would want to take away the incentive to become more wealthy — that’s the American dream,” Putnam said.
But she also thinks she’ll end up paying more in taxes. “What he’s doing I’m sure he thinks is correct,” she said of Trump. “It’s just the extreme method that he’s using.”
Trump approval on government spending
The law’s hefty price tag may be factoring into some Americans’ assessments of the law. The poll found they are less likely to approve of how Trump is handling government spending since the spring.
Just 38% of Americans approve of how Donald Trump is handling government spending, compared with 46% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in March.
Republicans are less likely to say the government is spending “too much” than they were in March 2023, when Joe Biden was president, but about 6 in 10 still think the government is overspending. A similar share of Democrats say the same thing.
Putnam, now a retiree, took issue with Trump’s cuts in federal workers, even though she says she approves of being able to “trim off people who aren’t really doing their jobs.”
The way she sees it, Trump drew attention to people abusing social services, then “fires the people in the office” that are investigating that very fraud and abuse. “What’s the sense in that?” she asked.
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
