The following article by Kevin Robillard, Nancy Cook and Cristiano Lima was posted on the Politico website December 21, 2017:
‘When [voters] start to see what happens to their paychecks,’ said one conservative, ‘they will change their minds.’
Conservative groups are planning a multimillion-dollar effort to sell the GOP’s tax cut law, hoping the American electorate can learn to love the party’s signature — but massively unpopular — legislative achievement.
“We have a public that distrusts anything coming out of Washington, especially anything from the majority party,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the grass-roots organizing arm of the powerful Koch brothers network of conservative groups. “We have a job that’s not that hard. We have to make sure people understand the benefits they’re going to receive from this legislation.”
The Koch network will launch a multimillion-dollar push next year to sell the bill, with paid advertising and town halls to educate voters. A major GOP super PAC is planning to spend $10 million to protect House members. And another group, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, plans to spend the majority of its $1 million annual budget selling the tax plan next year, according to one of the group’s founders, Stephen Moore, a distinguished visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and an informal economic adviser to the president.
Arguing that “the bill sells itself,” Moore said the committee intends to focus its efforts on selling the advantages of the tax bill to average Americans.
“Right now, Americans think it is a tax increase instead of a tax cut, but when they start to see what happens to their paychecks and how the economy responds, they will change their minds,” he predicted.
The GOP faces a staggering challenge. Most polling shows about one-third of the country supports the tax plan. And while Republicans argue that voters will embrace the plan once they reap the benefits, Democrats made a similar argument about Obamacare in 2010, which was not borne out on the ground. The GOP is also short on effective messengers, with both President Donald Trump and GOP congressional leaders unpopular nationally.
Democrats are scoffing at the Republican efforts to market the legislation. Even if many voters receive more take-home pay, the tax bill reinforces the idea that the GOP cares more about the wealthy than the working class, Democrats argue.
“The amount of money that most people see in their paycheck is unlikely to have a big impact on their perceptions of the law,” said Geoff Garin, a top Democratic pollster who has polled on tax reform for Priorities USA and other groups. “Even if people recognize that they are going to get something out of the tax bill, it’s going to feel paltry when they hear about how much money people at the top are making.”
Another Democratic pollster, Global Strategy Group’s Nick Gourevitch, said of working- and middle-class voters: “They know they’re not getting the good stuff.”
Independent analysts estimate more than 8 in 10 Americans would receive a tax break from the bill next year, with the largest benefits going to the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The legislation would add about $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
But most public polling indicates that the majority of Americans don’t believe the legislation will benefit them. A CNN poll released Tuesday found just 33 percent of Americans favor the plan, and 55 percent are in opposition. Two-thirds said it will do more to benefit the wealthy than the middle class, while 27 percent said the opposite. Just 21 percent said they thought they would be better off under the plan; 37 percent said they’d be worse off.
Corry Bliss, who heads two groups with ties to House Republican leadership, the American Action Network and Congressional Leadership Fund, said the bill’s low popularity is an opportunity. The group plans to spend $10 million before the end of February to help vulnerable members in 30 districts, and Bliss predicted that telling Americans to look at their paychecks and see the results for themselves will be an effective message.
“It sets up a nice contrast between a party that cut middle-class taxes by $2,000 and a party that is too busy screaming about impeaching the president to do anything to help the middle class,” Bliss said. American Action Network spent $24 million selling the plan before it passed.
Bliss and other Republicans also said GOP campaign coffers could see a surge after the party delivered a major win for donors. “Our donors care more about legislative accomplishments than winning elections,” he said. “This will be a real shot in the arm.”
Republicans were particularly hopeful it could help the financial situation at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has struggled to raise money in recent months. Federal Election Commission documents show the committee raised just less than $2.1 million in November, and spent more than it raised for the fifth month in a row.
The Koch network, which spent $15 million before the bill’s passage, is planning town halls with economists, members of Congress and accountants to explain the plan, as well as radio, television and digital advertising.
Phillips also said there will be more targeted efforts. For instance, he said, the groups might run digital ads on websites popular with young men who make less than $50,000 a year to remind them of the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate, which that group disproportionately paid the penalty for not complying with. They might also carry out tax prep work in Latino communities to highlight how families are saving money, he added.
Other groups that worked to sell the bill aren’t sure of their plans. Many White House officials and congressional lawmakers and staffers — still on a high from passing the sweeping tax legislation — are eager to go home for the holidays and deal with the messaging question when they return next year. Both FreedomWorks and the National Taxpayers’ Union indicated they would spend in the new year to boost the plan’s popularity, but the details remained unclear.
At a celebratory happy hour at the Dubliner bar near Capitol Hill on Wednesday night, congressional staffers mingled with policy and political strategists from a number of outside groups that helped push the tax overhaul effort. Many acknowledged that Republicans still have a lot to do to sell the legislation, said one conservative lobbyist who attended.
“It is pretty clear to everyone that this bill has taken a beating,” said the lobbyist. “The bill was passed by one party and the other party is trying to do everything they can to criticize it. The bill touches so many different parts of the economy that there are so many different areas you can talk about.”
Democrats are aiming to inflict pain on Republicans who voted for the bill. They note that voters believe tax legislation will favor the wealthy over the middle class — the exact narrative Democrats have sought to push to win over voters who backed former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 before switching to Trump in 2016.
“Voting to enrich the already rich at the expense of the middle class is an anchor around the ankle of most Republicans running in the midterm,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who has worked with Not One Penny, a coalition of Democratic groups that fought the tax bill. Not One Penny spent $5 million in the run-up to the tax vote and will drop at least that on ads criticizing Republicans who supported the legislation.
Strategists working against the bill said there’s little the Koch brothers and other big GOP donors can do to the make the bill more popular.
“I think they are going to spend millions of dollars trying to put lipstick on this pig,” said Indivisible co-executive director Ezra Levin. “But unfortunately there’s nothing they can do to change it from being a pig.”
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