65% of voters support corporate tax hikes to pay for Biden's infrastructure plan, new poll finds

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65% of voters support corporate tax hikes to pay for Biden's infrastructure plan, new poll finds
President Joe Biden.Alex Wong/Getty Images
  • A Morning Consult/Politico poll found 65% of voters support a corporate tax hike to fund infrastructure.
  • It also found that three-fourths of voters agree corporations should pay higher taxes.
  • While Biden proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, he expressed willingness to negotiate with the GOP on its size.
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The $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan President Joe Biden unveiled last week includes a proposed corporate tax hike to 28%, and voters seem to like it, even a significant minority of Republicans.

A Morning Consult/Politico poll released on Wednesday found that 65% of all voters support corporate tax hikes to pay for Biden's infrastructure plan, with 85% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 42% of Republicans supporting the tax hike. It also found that 53% of voters overall support infrastructure improvements with an increased corporate tax rate.

"On a broad level, nearly three-quarters of voters agree that corporations should pay higher taxes, including 85% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans," the poll said.

Here are the other main findings of the poll:

  • 21% of all voters somewhat or strongly oppose corporate tax hikes to fund infrastructure;
  • Republican voters were split on funding infrastructure this way, with 42% supporting Biden's plan to raise corporate taxes and 47% opposing it;
  • And when given the choice between making infrastructure improvements through corporate tax hikes or improving infrastructure only if it were done without tax increases, 53% of voters backed the former option.

The poll also found that only 4% of voters said infrastructure improvements aren't worth doing at all.

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While the majority of voters might support raising taxes to fund infrastructure, Republican lawmakers have already come out against this. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week that Biden's plan will not get any Republican votes in the Senate because "the last thing the economy needs right now is a big, whopping tax increase."

This came after he released a statement calling the president's infrastructure plan is a "Trojan horse" for tax hikes.

Democratic senators have also expressed concerns with the plan. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said on a West Virginia radio show that "as the bill exists today, it needs to be changed." He said he does not support Biden's plan to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, and when asked if he would not support a bill with a 28% corporate tax rate, Manchin said: "Well, the bill basically is not going to end up that way."

On Wednesday, the Biden administration unveiled a proposal for a series of corporate tax hikes, projecting they would raise $2.5 trillion over 15 years. This followed the Treasury Department's 19-page plan it released hours earlier, which included raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, establishing a global minimum tax for multinational corporations, and ending profit offshoring.

Biden said on Wednesday that he would be willing to negotiate with Republicans on the size of the corporate tax increase.

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"I'm wide open, but we got to pay for this," Biden said. "I am willing to negotiate that."

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