Trump tax cut grows way more popular

“If a tax falls in a forest and no one notices,” asked the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell last December, “does it make a sound?”

Rampell was referring, of course, to the unpopular-at-the-time tax bill, which President Donald Trump signed right about the time she wrote those words. In that very column, she noted that at the time, the public “hates, hates, hates the tax bill,” believing it wouldn’t make much of an impression because “the tax cuts may be too modest and doled out too incrementally for most Americans to notice their existence.”

“Despite what Republican legislative priorities suggest, most Americans don’t care all that much if their taxes go down,” she wrote.

But now that taxes are actually falling, the silence is deafening.

According to a poll released by The New York Times this week, a majority of Americans support the tax bill, by a margin of 51% to 46%. This is in stark contrast to December when only 37% approved of the bill and 57% disapproved.

Despite the left’s best efforts, this sharp turnaround in public perception was predictable. Before the bill passed, only 14% of Americans polled by Monmouth believed they would be getting a tax cut; 50% believed their taxes would increase.

But with people starting to see more money in their monthly paychecks, middle-class workers are beginning to realize the tax cut’s benefits.

Of course, conservatives were fighting against the negative public perception of the bill all along. Before the tax cut passed, the left-leaning Tax Policy Center estimated that 80% of Americans would be getting a tax break (averaging $2,120), with only 5% of taxpayers seeing an increase.

So where did taxpayers get the idea that the bill was a big middle-class tax hike? Perhaps from Rampell, who wrote one nuanced column about the tax bill titled, “Apparently Republicans want to kick the middle class in the face.” Or maybe they read Vox’s Matt Yglesias saying Republicans were “on tilt” with their “super-unpopular tax bill.” Or maybe they accidentally found themselves reading “conservative” Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who called the bill a “grotesque giveaway to the rich.”

If 51% of Americans now enjoy being kicked in the face, we have a lot more to worry about than the Tide Pod challenge.

Even if one excuses the hyperbole on the part of opinion writers, straight news reporting on the tax bill was itself a national scandal. News article after news article highlighted the Democratic talking points against the bill, leaving Americans with an impression that the bill did exactly the opposite of what it actually did.

CNN, for example, reported that “Poor Americans would lose billions under the Senate GOP tax bill.” When the bill passed the House of Representatives, an Associated Press tweet announced the bill provided “steep tax cuts for businesses, the wealthy.”

It is no coincidence that public approval of the bill began to soar as coverage faded. When media outlets let the bill speak for itself, the benefits predictably grew louder.

But don’t wait for an Oscar-nominated thriller next year starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep called, “Yeah, Our Bad.”