Tag Archives: Internal Revenue Service

Poll on Government Shows its Parts are Greater than the Whole

The Pew Center for the People & The Press released their “trust in government” poll (Oct. 9-13; 1,504 US adults) during the past week, and the results cause analysts to question what the conclusions really mean.

According to the Pew data, people’s trust in the US government “to do what is right just about always or most of the time” has fallen to tie an all-time low of 19 percent, and those who say they are angry with the government has risen to a record high of 30 percent, exceeding the 26 percent barrier recorded for this same question in late September.

But when asked their feelings about the individual government agencies only one, the Internal Revenue Service, draws negative ratings. Federal employees are well thought of, too. The percentage of respondents expressing a favorable view of government workers reached 62 percent in this poll.

To review, taken as a whole the government is poorly viewed but its parts are rated positively, and the people implementing the programs well liked. For example, the Center for Disease Control draws the best reviews, scoring a 75:14 percent favorable to unfavorable ratio. NASA is a close second, registering 73:15 percent positive to negative. Next, and somewhat surprisingly so, is the Department of Defense (72:23 percent). Following are the Veterans Administration (68:25 percent), Department of Homeland Security (66:30 percent), and the Food & Drug Administration (65:29 percent).

As mentioned previously, it is the IRS that scores upside down ratings, largely due to a vast amount of negative publicity surrounding the agency in the past few months. According to these respondents, 44 percent have a positive view of the IRS as opposed to 51 percent who express a negative opinion. But, even this ratio is not particularly bad. More surprisingly, the National Security Agency, regularly in the news for conducting extensive monitoring of the citizenry still enjoys a respectable 54:35 percent positive ratio. Though the NSA ratio  Continue reading >

Will Ad Tying IRS to Health Care Move Mass. Voters?

As expected, a political entity is taking to the airwaves to highlight the Internal Revenue Service’s role in implementing the Obama healthcare law, but the message delivery needs to be stronger if they expect to move voters.

The organization Americans for Progressive Action, supporting Republican Gabriel Gomez over Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA-5) in the Senate special election scheduled for June 25 in Massachusetts, attacked with an ad that depicts Markey as supporting IRS “control” of “health care reform” and Gomez as an opponent, though making it clear that the Republican supports reforming the healthcare system. (Though the ad says that both Markey and Gomez support “healthcare reform”, it doesn’t specifically say that Gomez supports President Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act, though the casual viewer will be left with the impression that he does.)

The effectiveness of the ad will be questioned. Though making it clear that the IRS “controlling” healthcare reform is a bad thing, it doesn’t explain why. The spot assumes, most likely incorrectly, that the viewing voter base knows the details of the current IRS profiling scandal.

Survey data will soon tell us if the IRS issue is moving voters in the Massachusetts Senate race, which could be a precursor of how the issue might play in the regular 2014 election. But, the political ad producers will have to tell a better story than the APA’s current effort if they hope to make this issue a deciding electoral factor.