51% Say It’s Possible to Balance Budget Without Raising Taxes

While President Obama’s bipartisan deficit reduction commission is considering a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to tackle the country’s growing deficit, a slight majority of voters now say it’s possible to balance the budget without raising taxes.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters believe it is possible to achieve a balanced federal budget without tax hikes, but that's up 14 points from February.  Thirty-three percent (33%) disagree and think raising taxes is necessary, while another 16% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

In the previous survey, 42% did not believe it is possible to balance the budget with raising taxes.

Opponents of extending the so-called Bush tax cuts cite the size of the federal deficit as one of their chief arguments, but voters still hold a slight preference for continuing those tax cuts for all Americans rather than continuing them for all but the wealthy. 

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 13-14, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Do most Democrats think it’s possible to balance the budget without tax hikes? How do Political Class voters react to the same question? Become a Platinum Member to find out.