Though Donald Trump may be seeing a bump in recent polls, a majority of Americas still believe that his policies are doing nothing to help the nation’s poor citizens.
A recent poll from Monmouth University found that 53 percent of respondents said lower-income Americans are seeing no benefit at all from Donald Trump’s policies. The poll found that 12 percent of Americans believe the poor are doing better under Donald Trump, and 28 percent say poorer Americans are doing a little better.
As The Hill noted, many Americans also believe that Trump’s policies will not help their own families. A total of 36 percent said they expect to be hurt by Trump’s policies, and 26 percent believe they will benefit under Trump.
Critics have said that many of Donald Trump’s policies give benefits to wealthier Americans while ignoring the poor. Earlier this year, Vox broke down Trump’s tax cuts and found that the benefits went disproportionately to the rich, while over the next decade the poor would be struck hard by the elimination of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
Donald Trump has also proposed taking away $7 billion in unspent funds from the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which offers low-cost insurance to children in low-income families. As Time pointed out, the proposal has drawn a strong pushback from Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer.
Schumer accused Trump and Congressional Republicans of “looking to tear apart the bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), hurting middle-class families and low-income children, to appease the most conservative special interests and feel better about blowing up the deficit to give the wealthiest few and biggest corporations huge tax breaks.”
The poll comes amid overall rising popularity for Trump. Boosted by a still-strong economy and a new peace deal that appears to have North Korea giving up nuclear weapons, Trump’s overall approval ratings have been ticking upward. According to FiveThirtyEight , which aggregates all approval polls, Trump’s approval has now reached 42.1 percent, the highest level since his first three months in office.
Poll: Most Americans believe poor people haven’t benefited from Trump policies https://t.co/cN97MajoJv pic.twitter.com/lPhQMXxsq1
— The Hill (@thehill) May 12, 2018
The last time Monmouth University asked this question during Barack Obama’s presidency, from a poll conducted in January 2017, found that 37 percent of Americans believed lower-income individuals did not benefit from Obama’s policies.
