Grim Findings for the GOPThere has been a total rejection of the national Republican Party’s economic agenda by the countries
youth. For four years, Republican candidates have been telling Americans that Obama’s policies are
responsible for nearly all their financial ills. Yet a majority of young people believe Republican policies
played either a major role or the biggest role in bringing about the Great Recession, giving Democrats
a 16-point advantage over Republicans in handling jobs and the economy.
After decades of pushing bigger and bigger tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest individuals and
largest corporations, Republicans must face the fact that only 3 percent of the next generation
wants more tax cuts for the wealthy. Three percent. In a survey taken after the January budget
deal that raised taxes on the richest Americans, a majority of young voters still believe those
taxes should be even higher.
Despite a push for lower corporate tax rates that has come from both Republicans and Democrats
in Washington, only about a third of young people think such a policy would help create jobs or
improve their lives. Despite a sustained Republican jihad against even the most basic regulations
on Wall Street banks or insurance companies or corporate polluters, only 40 percent of young
people believe they’d be better off if business regulations were reduced.
And after the 37th failed vote by House Republicans to repeal Obamacare—a perverse obsession
that seems to defy both substantive and political logic—only 37 percent of young Americans
believe they’d be better off if the law no longer existed. Today Obamacare is favored by 9 points
among young people, 44 percent of whom say “basic health insurance is a right for all people,
and if someone has no means of paying for it, the government should provide.
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