Senate Republicans probably have the leverage (via filibuster) to kill the House passed bill exempting those earning over $250K from tax cuts. But conservatives are “utterly uninterested” in the public’s public’s views concerning their key tax and budget proposals, explains TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages:

…Poll after poll shows that only a small minority–about a third–want to keep the tax cuts for the rich while everybody else wants to let them expire. The latest evidence comes from a Roper/AP-CNBC poll. Thirty-four percent in that poll wanted to keep the tax cuts for everyone including the rich, while 64 percent wanted either to just keep the tax cuts with incomes less than $250,000 (50 percent) or end them for everyone (14 percent).
Conservatives’ devotion to tax cuts for the rich also shows their lack of seriousness about tackling the deficit problem. Ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would save $700 billion over 10 years but those savings are obviously far less important to them than their ideological antitax, pro-wealthy agenda.

Teixeira adds that conservatives are loving the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission’s proposals to gut social programs, especially Social Security — contrary to the strongly-held views of the public:

…In the same poll the public vigorously opposed the proposal to raise the Social Security retirement age to 69. Just 28 percent favored this idea while 64 percent opposed it.

As Teixeira concludes of conservatives in congress, “…Their real commitment is to their ideology–an ideology of cutting social programs, opposing taxes, and rewarding the rich. It’s certainly not to reducing the deficit and even less to the wishes of the American public.”