Wishing for More for Less

Lower taxes, yes, but voters want more services too

There is no doubt about Americans' desire for tax cuts, but there is considerable uncertainty about what changes such cuts would bring. Government officials warn loudly that tax slashing would mean reductions in police protection and public schooling, closed libraries and potholed streets. But most Americans apparently don't believe them. They think high taxes are a result not of the public demand for services but mainly of the relentless growth of the bureaucracy. Many believe taxes can easily be cut as much as 33%. How? They think the most obvious place to start the cuts is to eliminate government waste. Far from being ready to accept a serious reduction in government services, they think still more should be spent in such major areas as health and education.

These are among the main findings of a national telephone survey of 1,034 registered voters taken for TIME by the public opinion research firm of Yankelovich, Skelly and White over a four-day period ending Oct. 8. The poll does not indicate any overwhelming sense of national anxiety. When asked a general question -- "How do you feel that things are going in the country these days?" -- 50% were willing to answer with a mild "fairly well" (only 5% thought things were going "very well"). Fully 76% felt the future would eventually bring prosperity, and 40% thought that their own standard of living would get better during the next year or two. Republicans and Westerners tended to be the most pessimistic; Carter supporters and those under 35 tended to be the most optimistic.

But the American voters do feel concern. The 55% figure of those who think things are going "very well" or "fairly well" is down from a 68% optimism rate when Carter took office. And when questioned about their worries, they said that the state of the economy was by far the most troublesome. Some 62% cited it as one of the national issues "that particularly concern you." Only 8% appeared worried about crime hi the streets and 2% thought relations with the Soviets were a problem. Concern about the economy has risen sharply during Carter's Administration. Only 42% cited the economy as a major worry hi March 1977, as compared with 62% today. Worry about crime in the streets, by contrast, has dropped in half during that same period.

Americans' economic worries cover a wide range of problems, but taxes are clearly among the most notable. When asked what troubled them a lot personally, 65% cited the difficulty in meeting high tax payments, whereas only 45% attached similar importance to the difficulty of paying rent or keeping up a house, and only 29% said they worried a lot about losing their jobs because of the state of the economy.

The voters feel that Jimmy Carter has not dealt well with these worries. Although by all indications Carter's standing hi the public's mind has unproved, that judgment is based largely on personal impressions (50% gave him high marks for leadership) and on his handling of foreign affairs. Indeed, the number of voters who expressed considerable confidence hi the President's foreign policy soared from a mere 13% last August to 31% in October -- the result, of course, of his triumph at Camp David. But when it came to Carter's management of the economy, the number of those expressing considerable confidence sagged steadily from 33% hi March 1977 to a feeble 14% now. Perhaps more seriously, many voters have very little confidence in Carter's ability to do better in the future. Only 11% thought inflation would be curtailed. Some 43% actually believed it would get worse (those figures were almost exactly reversed last year, when 35% thought the situation might improve and only 19% didn't).

Experts have generally attributed the steady rise hi taxes over the years to the increasing public demand for more police protection, health, education and other services, but ordinary citizens nowadays simply no longer share that view. When asked the cause of higher taxes, 43% attributed them to government waste. Another 41% blamed them on "inflation putting you in a higher tax bracket." Only 10% thought the reason was "people asking more from the government."

The greatest villain in the voters' minds is the federal income tax: 48% cited it as the levy they most want reduced, 33% named property taxes, and despite the recent uproar about the increase hi Social Security taxes, only 8% now say these are the taxes they most want lowered. The percentages show no great variation for party affiliation or economic status, for Democrats and Republicans, or for homeowners and renters. When it comes to cutting federal income taxes, the voters would cut deeply. Asked about the Kemp-Roth bill to lower the tax rate by 33%, some 40% decided that this would be "too high," but another 48% thought it would be "about right." Carter's admonition that a Kemp-Roth cut would be wildly inflationary seems to have had little influence: 36% said a tax slash would have no effect on inflation, and a surprising 28% said it would lessen inflation.

The desire for tax cuts is overwhelming, and 69% believe it would be "possible to cut taxes a lot without reducing services." Although this sentiment is strongest among upper-income whites, a solid majority of blacks and the poor take a similar view.

But when the questioning centers more narrowly on local taxes, where there is a more immediate and visible relationship between levies paid and benefits received, the voters become somewhat more cautious. Asked point-blank whether they would choose keeping the present local tax rate and improving services or cutting both taxes and services, 51% wanted more services. Among political groups, only registered Republicans wanted, by a majority of 50% to 46%, tax cuts, even if that brought a reduction in services.

Asked which specific services should be expanded or reduced, voters tended to feel government should spend more in most areas. Twice as many (45% to 22%) favored increased rather than decreased spending on education; three times as many (51% to 17%) favored more rather than less spending on health care; more than six times as many (59% to 9%) favored increased rather than decreased spending on fighting crime. A slim margin favored increased spending on defense and transportation. The only areas where a large majority of voters advocated cuts were in welfare and foreign aid. Just over 50% said that welfare spending was too high, whereas only 25% said it was too low. Although the U.S. now spends a smaller percentage of its G.N.P. on foreign aid than almost any other industrialized country, a significant 72% still considered that it was too much, and only 4% said it was too little.

Republicans, who have traditionally called for tax cuts, have failed to capitalize on the new sentiment. When asked which party would fight harder to cut taxes, 24% said the Republicans and 23% said the Democrats, with the remainder being unsure or seeing no difference. Similarly, 29% of those polled said the Democrats would run the government more efficiently, whereas only 22% said the Republicans would. Democrats were seen by a 30%-to-24% margin as more likely to "keep the economy prosperous." Voters did not express overwhelming confidence in either party to handle the tax issue, but those who did have a preference tended to cite their own party as being best on taxes. The Democratic edge stems from its larger share of the registered voters.

Nor is the antitax sentiment a purely conservative trend. If voters had a choice between two candidates who expressed the same views on taxes, but one was generally perceived as a moderate and the other as a conservative, voters surveyed would tend to choose the moderate by a 47%-to-43% margin. But people do not intend to vote solely on the tax issue: only a third of those surveyed said they would switch away from an otherwise preferred candidate if he took a stand against a tax cut, less than the percentage of voters who said they would abandon a preferred candidate if he came out in favor of federally funded abortions.

The volatility of public opinion is apparent in the large shifts in the people's overall impression of Carter. Shortly after he took office, 48% said their opinion of Carter had improved, compared with 6% who said it had worsened. At one of his low points, last June, only 11% said their opinion of him had improved since he took office, while 37% said they thought less of him. Now 21% feel better about him and only 26% feel worse.

When voters were asked to grade 17 areas of Carter's performance on a kind of report card, he won his highest mark 90%, in the area of "advancing the cause of peace in the world." This was an increase of 21% since a similar poll wa taken last June.

Carter also rated a 72% for "providing moral leadership," an improvement from the 66% of last June but still down a lot from the glowing 91% that he scored near the beginning of his Administration, in March 1977. Carter's report card dropped somewhat in the general area of domestic social policy. Only 54% rated him favorably on aid to cities, 53% on coming to grips with the energy problem, and 52% on "keeping our defenses strong." Unquestionably, he fared worst on all economic issues -- 49% on providing jobs, 47% on cutting back government bureaucracy and 24% on curbing inflation.

Primarily on the basis of his gains in the field of foreign policy, and the general sense of moral leadership that came from his summit triumph, Carter has been able to turn around the results of hypothetical contests between himself and Gerald Ford. In trial heats polled in June and August, Ford came out ahead by eight percentage points. Today Carter would win 46% to 35% over his former opponent and carry all sections of the country. Carter would likewise beat Reagan, as he would have earlier this year; but perhaps because of his whirlwind tour on behalf of Republicans, Reagan is closing the gap. Those voters who call the tax-cut issue critical in their choice of candidates are less likely to support Carter over either Republican.

Within his own party, Carter still would not capture the presidential nomination if he were seriously challenged by Senator Edward Kennedy. According to Democrats and independents polled, Carter trails Kennedy 37% to 47%. This is a much smaller margin than the 24-point difference shown in polls this summer, but it is still impressive.

If the election were held today, the Democrats would easily keep control of Congress: 37% say that they plan to vote Democratic and 21% Republican. Democrats lead in all regions of the country, especially the South. About as many Republicans as Democrats (6%) now plan to cross party lines, and there is a greater percentage of undecided Republican voters than Democrats. In fact, only 55% of registered Republicans are now prepared to say they will vote with their party.

But with less than a month left, a whopping 40% of the voters surveyed, including 62% of the independents, say they are still undecided. Perhaps the uncertainty stems from the voters' skepticism about the current gale of antitax rhetoric: two-thirds think the candidates' tax-slashing promises are just "a lot of talk."

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