By SEUNG MIN KIM and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s a reason why President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are spending so much time attacking each other — people don’t think either man has much to brag about when it comes to his own record. Americans generally think that while they were in the White House, both did more harm than good on key issues.

But the two candidates have different weak spots. For Biden, it’s widespread unhappiness on two issues: the economy and immigration. Trump, meanwhile, faces an electorate where substantial shares think he harmed the country on a range of issues.

A new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that more than half of U.S. adults think Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on cost of living and immigration, while nearly half think Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change.

“Considering the price of gas, the price of groceries, the economy — I did very well during those four years,” Christina Elliott, 60, a Republican from Texas, said of the Trump presidency. “I didn’t have to worry about filling up my tank or losing half of my paycheck to the grocery store.”

Elliott wasn’t too keen on Trump’s handling of abortion and said that when it comes to the former president’s rhetoric, “He just needs to learn how to be tactful and shut his mouth.”

“But other than that, like I said, I did very well during the Trump years,” she added.

The polling underscores why certain issues — such as abortion for Biden and immigration for Trump — have been persistent focal points for each of the campaigns. The former president regularly decries the number of asylum-seekers who have arrived in the U.S. under Biden, describing the situation in apocalyptic and dark terms. And Biden has gone on the offensive against Trump on abortion, especially after this week’s ruling from the Arizona Supreme Court that essentially criminalized the procedure in the state.

When asked which president did more to help people like them, roughly one-third say Donald Trump and about one-quarter say Joe Biden. Yet 30% of adults said neither Biden nor Trump benefitted them. It’s another data point reflecting an electorate that has been largely disappointed with this year’s general election choices, generating little enthusiasm among key parts of the Biden and Trump political coalitions.

Americans rate Biden particularly negatively on a few specific issues. Only about 2 in 10 Americans think Biden’s presidency helped “a lot” or “a little” on cost of living, and 16% say that about immigration and border security. Nearly 6 in 10 say his presidency hurt a lot or a little on these issues. Nearly half, 46%, of Americans, by contrast, say that Trump’s presidency helped a lot or a little on immigration or border security. Four in 10 say it helped on cost of living.

Texas resident Trelicia Mornes, 36, said she feels the Biden presidency has hurt a lot when it comes to everyday expenses.

“Now that he’s in the office, the cost of living has spiked out of control, and there’s nothing being done about it,” Mornes, a Democrat, said, pointing to rising costs of rent and food. She said she believes Biden can do more, “He just chooses to do other things.”

The pandemic hurt Trump in terms of employment as the economy lost 2.7 million jobs under his watch. But the pandemic lockdowns also dramatically curbed inflation as the consumer price index dipped from an annual rate of 2.3% to as low as 0.1%. At the same time, low interest rates and historic levels of deficit-funded government stimulus left many households feeling better off under Trump.

Coming out of the pandemic, Biden gave the economy a boost with additional aid that helped spur job gains of 15.2 million under his watch. But supply chain issues, Russia’s war in Ukraine and Biden’s aid package are judged by many economists as having contributed to rising inflation, hurting the Democrat’s approval ratings.

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Trump’s advantage on the cost of living and immigration is driven partially by Democrats’ lack of enthusiasm about Biden’s performance. About one-third of Democrats, for example, think Biden’s presidency hurt on cost of living, and another third think Biden neither helped nor hurt. Just one-third of Democrats think Biden’s presidency helped on cost of living. About 3 in 10 Democrats think Biden’s presidency helped on immigration and border security, a similar share think his presidency hurt, and about 4 in 10 think it made no difference.

Nadia Stepicheva, 38, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, is unhappy with how Biden has handled immigration.

“The problem is, I really don’t like illegal type of immigration,” Stepicheva said. She thinks that people who enter the U.S., even if they come in illegally, should be allowed to work so that taxpayer dollars aren’t used to care for them and house them.

Stepicheva said she has always leaned in favor of Democrats and the party’s policies, “But the last four years, I feel like it’s getting too much in terms of money spent for immigration, forgiving all these student loans.” She said she’s torn in terms of who she will vote for this November.

But independents also rate Biden low on these issues: Nearly 6 in 10 independents say Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on cost of living. About 4 in 10 independents say Biden’s presidency has hurt the country when it comes to the cost of health care and relations with other countries.

Trump has a different problem.

The former president doesn’t have any asked-about issues where more than half of Americans think he did more to hurt things than to help, but the overall sense of harm is somewhat broader. Nearly half of Americans think his presidency did more to hurt than help on climate change, voting rights and election security, abortion laws and relations with foreign countries.

Catherine Scott, a Republican who recently moved to New York from Florida, said she found Trump’s approach to foreign policy particularly concerning.

“I understand that some people really admire Trump’s ability to be a spitfire and just say whatever is at the top of his mind,” said Scott, 30. But, pointing to Trump’s complimentary comments toward autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Scott said, “I don’t think he has all the foresight to understand that might not always be the thing to do.”

The best issue for both Biden and Trump overall is job creation. Trump has a small edge here: Nearly half say his presidency helped, while 36% say Biden’s presidency helped. About half of Americans also think Trump’s presidency helped on immigration and 4 in 10 think his presidency helped on cost of living.

On every other issue, the share of Americans who say that Biden or Trump helped the country a lot or a little is around 3 in 10 or less. But Republicans, overall, tend to see more of a benefit from Trump’s presidency than Democrats do from Biden’s — even on issues where Biden has worked to highlight his victories.

For example, only about half of Democrats say that Biden’s presidency has helped on climate change or the cost of health care. On abortion laws, 77% of Democrats think that Trump’s presidency was at least a little harmful, but only about 4 in 10 say that Biden’s presidency helped a lot or a little, and a similar share think Biden’s presidency hasn’t made a difference.

Meanwhile, around 8 in 10 Republicans say that Trump’s presidency helped on immigration and border security, creating jobs and cost of living.

The poll of 1,204 adults was conducted April 4-8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

How grotesque to watch long-term U.S. security interests hang on the outcome of a political battle between the Hamlet-like speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and vengeful MAGA conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene.

As Congress returns from Easter break, Johnson still hadn’t made up his mind whether to allow a vote on a bill that includes $60 billion worth of desperately needed aid for Ukraine — which would assuredly pass with a bipartisan majority.

He could still bow to Greene, who (with a growing number of colleagues) opposes U.S. help for Kyiv. In the topsy-turvy system MAGA zealots have imposed on the GOP House caucus, one Republican ideologue — in this case, the representative from Georgia — can trigger the House speaker’s ouster.

While these two political lightweights dither, people are dying, as Ukrainian soldiers run out of artillery shells and Russia bombs civilian homes and infrastructure in large Ukrainian cities that lack air defenses.

“If the Congress doesn’t help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently told the country’s local fundraising group, UNITED24. “If Ukraine loses this war, other countries will be attacked.”

Unless Johnson finds some courage, the responsibility for this security debacle will lie on his shoulders. The blood of Ukrainian victims already stains MAGA hands.

The congressional struggle over Ukraine aid has dragged on for six months, as the GOP tried to link it to reforms that limit migration across the southern border. But when the Senate passed a bipartisan aid bill that included strong border reforms, Donald Trump pressured most GOP senators to oppose it.

Because of Trump’s opposition — tied to the former president’s desire to use immigration as a campaign issue — Johnson has refused to let the House vote on the Senate bill, which would be the quickest route to speeding the aid on its way.

Both Trump and his acolytes seem blissfully blind to the encouragement they are offering Russian President Vladimir Putin to commit further mayhem against the United States and its allies.

In Ukraine, Putin feels totally free to up the scale of his war crimes against civilians, as the GOP turns against Kyiv while the world and the White House focus on Gaza. Swarms of Russian drones, many provided by Iran, now hover over major cities such as Kharkiv, deliberately hitting apartment blocks, malls, and civilian power stations.

“People are afraid of the double tap,” the Russian tactic of a second attack wave that targets first responders, I was told by phone by Ukrainian photojournalist Alex Babenko, who had just left Kharkiv. “Firefighters and police and repairmen can’t work, because drones are flying around.”

If the aid package passed, Ukraine could acquire more air defenses, along with desperately needed artillery shells for the front lines. The longer the delay, the greater the chance that Russia could break through Ukraine’s defensive lines.

America’s European allies, who collectively give Ukraine far more aid than the United States, are struggling to help fill the weapons supply gap. But there is no way to replace the lapse of U.S. military aid.

The Europeans see firsthand how Putin has been enabled by the paralysis of the U.S. Congress. The Russian leader shows no hesitation about assassinating Russian dissidents abroad — in London, in the center of Berlin, and most recently, in a Spanish town. He also is blatantly collecting foreign hostages — including Americans like Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich — to trade for jailed Russian spies.

Putin and his Kremlin minions regularly dispense threats about using nuclear weapons, while threatening non-NATO members in Europe, and militarizing the Arctic. Putin has repeatedly made clear, in public speeches, that he seeks to rebuild the onetime Russian empire, even if that means seizing more sovereign territory from Ukraine and other European nations.

Yet, Trump continues to boast that he could negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours if reelected. He has privately said he would do so by pressuring Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, according to a report in the Washington Post. (Trump thinks Russian-speaking Ukrainians would prefer to live under Moscow’s rule, in apparent ignorance of the fact that Putin has bombed cities and villages filled with Ukrainians who speak Russian into smithereens.)

In other words, the GOP candidate wants to force Ukraine to capitulate to an aggressive dictator who invaded a peaceful neighbor and seeks to turn Ukraine into a Soviet-style satellite. Given Trump’s hostility to Ukraine, Putin appears confident he can pursue his aims fully if the Republican wins.

Meantime, in Congress and MAGA world, far-right Republicans talk as if Ukraine is the enemy, using debunked claims about stolen U.S. funds and Ukrainian corruption that echo Kremlin propaganda (which has metastasized on X, formerly known as Twitter).

Michael Whatley, who Trump picked as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, recently lumped Ukraine with Iran and China as an “aggressive” adversary who meddles with U.S. elections. (There was no mention of Russia.)

This is the fetid GOP atmosphere in which Speaker Johnson must make his decision: Does he want to do the right thing for American security, or kowtow to the MAGA mob whose leader admires Putin?

I must add here that President Joe Biden also faces a momentous choice: If aid resumes, the White House needs to stop foot-dragging on sending Ukraine key weapons systems such as long-range ATACMS missiles, with which Kyiv could expand its amazing progress in taking out Russian ships, military bases, and supply depots.

But first things first.

In the coming days, the future of the Ukraine war may be decided, either by a show of Johnsonian courage or by Putin’s pals in the GOP.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com

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Back in 2017, the debate around President Donald Trump’s tax cuts was a case study in how quickly a discussion around legitimate policy can descend into partisan nonsense. On one side, Republicans spouted unfounded claims that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. On the other, Democrats spouted equally unfounded claims that only big business and the wealthy would benefit.

As usual, the truth landed somewhere in the middle. No, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 didn’t pay for itself but at this moment reversing the marquee part of the legislation — lower tax rates for companies — to help narrow the bulging budget deficit is the last thing we should do. And while the cuts yielded benefits to Americans up and down the income scale, the benefits could best be described as modest.

Understanding what the legislation did and didn’t do is relevant now because they expire in 2025, and whoever wins this year’s presidential election will have to decide whether to extend them. What’s not in dispute is that the act represented the most sweeping overhaul of the tax system since the Reagan administration. For businesses, it aimed to spur capital spending by slashing the corporate tax from 35% to 21%. For individuals, it lowered rates across the board and simplified the code by limiting itemized deductions, increasing the standard deduction taken by those who don’t itemize and expanding access to the child tax credit.

The problem now is that largely because of fiscal spending to support the economy through the pandemic, the federal budget deficit has expanded to 6.44% of gross domestic product from 4.67% at the end of 2019, which at the time was the biggest shortfall since 2013. Also, the cost of servicing the deficit by borrowing has soared along with benchmark interest rates the last two years. For this reason alone, it’s possible some, but not all, the cuts will reversed. But which ones?

Whatever is decided, the corporate cuts are probably the last thing we want to repeal.

Despite the insistence of Republicans, who point to the rise in federal revenue following 2017, we can’t shrink the deficit by further reducing taxes. In 2022, federal revenue came in at $4.9 trillion, far higher than the $4.2 trillion predicted by the bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office before the tax cuts. Two factors are responsible for the outperformance. One, capital gains tax revenue jumped following the stock market’s big rally in 2020 and 2021. Two, a worker shortage during the pandemic caused wages to rise by almost 5% over the course of 2021. Higher wages not only led to higher incomes but also pushed many Americans into higher tax brackets, thereby increasing revenue.

Democrats have described the tax cuts as only benefiting the wealthy. This is also a gross distortion of the facts. Between 2017 and 2019, taxpayers at both the bottom and top of the income scale saw their average tax rate decline by a little less than 1%. Those in between saw more significant reductions, with the upper middle class — defined as those making $200,000 to $500,000 a year — seeing their tax rates decline by 2.5%. This reflects the fact that many of them are small business owners who, along with big corporations, received additional tax cuts designed to encourage economic growth.

In theory, cutting taxes on businesses encourages them to expand production because it increases their after-tax profit margins. Hence, companies are more willing to hire workers and invest in new technology or equipment to boost sales, spurring economic growth.

In practice, many Democrats and even some Republicans were concerned that businesses would use those higher profits to fund stock buybacks or higher dividend payouts to investors. Indeed, buybacks did increase sharply after 2017. For example, Apple Inc. doubled stock buybacks as its investment in the US declined. That was a bad look, but it doesn’t necessarily mean tax cuts didn’t work. If there had been none, Apple might have decided to decrease investment even more to fund stock buybacks.

Teasing out precisely what effect the Trump tax cuts had on a particular company’s investment decisions requires a deep dive into financial and tax records. Four economists from Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago and the US Treasury Department conducted a detailed analysis of more than 12,000 companies. The results released last month found that companies which experienced larger increases in their return on investment as a result of the tax cut, boosted their investment spending by larger amounts.

With their results, the economists calculated the effect lower tax rates had on the broad economy. Their estimates show that from 2018 to 2023, the Trump tax cuts raised annual investment by a little more than 7%. That equates to an additional $265 billion in private investment in 2023. They also estimated that increased business investment raised the average worker’s wages by about 1% — an income boost roughly equal to what millions of Americans got directly from the tax cuts. Yet, the corporate tax cuts cost $450 billion in the form of decreased federal revenue, compared with $1.1 trillion for individual tax cuts.

The Trump tax cuts were neither an economic panacea nor a rip-off. They produced a modest but meaningful increase in income for working Americans, both by reducing their tax burdens and increasing their wages. Lawmakers should keep this in the front of their minds as they debate how much, if any, of those tax cuts to keep.

Karl W. Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Previously, he was vice president for federal policy at the Tax Foundation and assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina.

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