Conservative Groups Seeking Support for Tax Cuts Find It a Hard Sell
“We Republicans get into the weeds and talk about technical tax policy and the budget process, and for the average American,
that ends up sounding like the adults on the old Charlie Brown cartoon — wah, wah, wah,” said David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, which has been among the groups pushing for tax cuts.
MIAMI — A dozen high school students working for Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political network funded by Charles G. and David H. Koch, fanned out across the Little Havana neighborhood one day last week to make the case
that the Republican tax bill was something to get excited about.
In counties where Mr. Trump performed exceptionally well —
that he won but Mr. Obama carried in 2012, or where he ran 20 percent ahead of what Mitt Romney received in 2012 — only 17 percent said they expect to pay less in taxes, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
But for groups like the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, those in the Kochs’ vast network
and others closely aligned with the pro-business wing of the Republican Party, the tax bill would be the only tangible legislative achievement after 11 months of an uneasy and, so far, unproductive alliance with a president they fiercely resisted during last year’s election.
Conservative activist groups like Americans for Prosperity, celebrating what they expect is the imminent passage of a tax package
that they and the Republican Party’s corporate backers have sought for a generation, now need to convince ordinary Americans that this is good for them too.
“The American people have waited 31 long years to see our broken tax code overhauled,” the leaders of the Koch’s political
network insisted in a letter to members of Congress on Monday, urging swift approval of final legislation.
