A majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump's mega-spending bill, according to a new poll.
The Wall Street Journal on Saturday published the results of a poll it conducted about the legislation. Overall, 52% of Americans oppose the bill, including 94% of Democrats and 54% of Independents. Conversely, 88% of Republicans supported the bill.
The poll included more than 1,500 voters and was conducted between July 16 and July 20 by two firms, one that represented Democrats and another representing Republicans.
“Cutting Medicaid is unpopular. Cutting food assistance is unpopular,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told the outlet. “Cutting those things in order to fund tax cuts for the very wealthy is unpopular, so it’s like it was designed in a lab to be unpopular.”
The Wall Street Journal poll is one of the first to be conducted after Trump and the GOP raced to pass the spending bill ahead of the July 4 weekend. It includes provisions that cut federal spending on Medicaid by $1 trillion over the next decade, which will result in more than 10 million people losing their health care. The bill also makes permanent Trump's tax cuts from his first administration.
One pollster said the benefits provided to average Americans, like removing taxes from tips, aren't enough to outweigh the larger concerns the public has with the bill.
“People know about the fact that it includes no tax on tips, and they really like that,” Molly Murphy, president of Impact Research, which represented the Democrats. “It’s not outweighing their concerns about cuts to healthcare, cuts to food services, kind of the other pieces in the bill.”