Most Americans favor the major provisions of the Democratic bill endorsed last week by Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia on climate change, health care and taxes, according to a new poll.
The Yahoo News/YouGov poll published Tuesday found that 47% of respondents favored the portion of the “Inflation Reduction Act” that promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 at a cost of $369 billion.
In contrast, 30% of respondents opposed the section of the bill.
A total of 61% of respondents said they favor the part of the package that’s intended to lower prescription drug prices by capping out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
Only 14% opposed this part of the bill.
And 53% of respondents favored a measure that said it would raise an estimated $451 billion in new revenue in the next decade by taxing large corporations, while also dedicating $300 billion to deficit reduction.
For this measure, 19% of people were opposed.
The poll also found some bipartisan support.
Republicans supported the measure to lower drug costs (47% favor versus 27% opposed), but were overwhelmingly against the climate change portion of the bill (64% opposed versus to 15% in favor) and weren’t fans of its intent to tax corporations in the name of the deficit either (40% opposed versus 28% in favor).
Senate Democrats may put the bill to a vote before the end of the week.
While making the rounds on the Sunday shows last weekend, Mr. Manchin told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Inflation Reduction Act is “not a Democrat bill, it’s not a Republican bill, it’s definitely not a ‘green’ bill, it’s a red, white and blue bill.”
He also told Fox News that he doesn’t believe the bill would cause inflation, but admitted that his support of President Biden’s nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan did produce that same effect.
The poll also asked people about their feelings on the economy, with 55% saying the economy is “poor.” That’s up from the 42% of respondents who felt that way in April during Yahoo News’ last poll on the topic.
Inflation was the top issue in this year’s election, polling at 32%.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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