Americans' Real Opinion of the Estate Tax

Economist Robert H. Frank has an interesting piece in the New York Times today noting that the right-wing is essentially lying about the public's support for a full repeal of the estate tax. Bought-off politicians continue to argue that eliminating the estate tax is widely supported in America - and that's simply untrue.

To help make his case, Frank asked the Survey Research Institute at Cornell to administer two versions of a national telephone survey. In the first, respondents were asked simply whether they favored or opposed the Bush administration's proposal. Typical of the findings in other, similar surveys, these respondents favored repeal by almost three to one. But, in the second version, respondents were reminded that the revenue shortfall from repealing the estate tax would entail raising other taxes, cutting government services or increasing federal borrowing. "Strikingly," he notes, "these respondents opposed repeal by almost four to one....Even among Republicans, 70 percent opposed its repeal in the second version of my survey."

These findings, while important, are not shocking, even if the media always portrays the American public as fully supportive of repeal. As a 2002 poll showed, Americans overwhelmingly support reforming the estate tax instead of fully repealing it (for more details on that poll, see these charts). When probed, the public understands that the estate tax affects almost no ordinary American - it only affects the super wealthy.

By design, right-wingers only cite polls that don't give survey respondents a choice between elimination and reform. And that means we get a dishonest story about where the public really is on the issue.