news2notice

These bear repeating: from a Washington Post article:
“The fiscal shift in the Reagan years was staggering. In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control," the deficit had reached almost $74 billion, the federal debt $930 billion. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion. The debt by 1988 totaled $2.6 trillion. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.”

Joe Conason, 1-14-2012
Leslie Stahl on “60 minutes” showed President Ronald Reagan “announcing his 1982 tax increase-sometimes described as the largest tax hike in American history-”

“...even though Ronald Reagan cut taxes, he also pushed through several tax increases, including one in 1982 during a recession , as Reagan intones, ‘Make no mistake about it, this whole package is a compromise.’”

“In fact, Reagan comprised on many issues, including an agreement with Dem House Speaker O’Neill, to improve the solvency of Social Security for the past several decades....

Reagan was forced to raise taxes because his cuts didn’t “pay for themselves” as the mythology also insists-and he didn’t raise taxes enough to avoid a legacy of deficits that only Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase on the top tier began to remedy.

The Bush tax cuts, like Reagan’s, set the nation on its current fiscal path, worsened by his multitrillion-dollar misadventure in Iraq..”

“In an election year, when every Republican candidate has vowed to refuse any compromise that will reduce future deficits, the urge to erase history and distort facts, must be exposed over and over again.”
Joe Conason, also referring to rep Eric Cantor’s aide assertion that Reagan didn’t raise taxes.

Labels: and increased Deficit big time, Reagan raised taxes