A majority of the American people in a new survey supports the Republican approach to avoiding the fiscal cliff – reforming the tax code by eliminating special interest loopholes and cutting spending – over the Democratic plan to raise tax rates and hurt our economy. According to the Washington Post:

• Republicans have offered to accept new revenue via economic growth, spurred “by rewriting the tax code to eliminate individual loopholes and deductions, an approach House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) argues would be less harmful to businesses and the economy.”
   
• The GOP approach “is also more popular, Republicans say. They pointed to a new poll by the Winston Group, a GOP research firm whose president, David Winston, is close to Boehner. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed preferred a deal that wipes out ‘special interest tax loopholes and deductions commonly used by the wealthy’ over an approach that raises tax rates on ‘Americans earning more than $250,000’ on Jan. 1.”

The House has already passed a bipartisan bill stopping all of the looming tax hikes. But some Democrats (including “a growing bloc” of Democrats who “say they’re not afraid to watch defense spending get gouged and taxes go up on every American”) are pushing fiscal cliff tax rate increases that would hurt nearly one million small businesses. “At a time of so much economic suffering,” said GOP Conference Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) in the weekly GOP address, “we can’t let this happen.”

“Republicans believe this is an opportunity to finally solve problems that Washington has ignored for too long, whether it’s a tax code that’s too costly and complicated or entitlement programs that are on the path to bankruptcy,” said Chairman McMorris Rodgers. “No more short-term band-aids or shopworn excuses. We can do this right.”

A recent Gallup survey similarly shows Americans strongly favor the GOP framework for averting the fiscal cliff: simplifying the tax code by lowering rates and closing loopholes, saving our biggest entitlement programs, and making needed spending cuts were all cited as higher priorities than increasing tax rates. Watch Speaker John Boehner’s recent remarks on avoiding the fiscal cliff here.