Bruce Bartlett: Reagan responsible for largest tax increase in history!

[redqueen]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/bb20031028.shtml

(snip)

Peter Wallison, who was White House counsel to President Reagan, responded to my analysis in The New York Times on Oct. 26. He pointed to Ronald Reagan's resistance to tax increases in 1982, citing passages from Reagan's diary that were published in his autobiography, "An American Life." The gist of Wallison's article is that Ronald Reagan successfully resisted efforts by his staff and many in Congress to raise taxes, thereby ensuring the victory of Reaganomics.

The only problem with this analysis is that it is historically inaccurate. Reagan may have resisted calls for tax increases, but he ultimately supported them. In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year, and the Highway Revenue Act of 1982 raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year.

(snip)

The year 1988 appears to be the only year of the Reagan presidency, other than the first, in which taxes were not raised legislatively. Of course, previous tax increases remained in effect. According to a table in the 1990 budget, the net effect of all these tax increases was to raise taxes by $164 billion in 1992, or 2.6 percent of GDP. This is equivalent to almost $300 billion in today's economy.


Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a TownHall.com member group.

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Amazing...

[leftyandproud]

1. um..

don't go around parading that headline...to be accurate, clinton signed the largest tax increase in history...even though it simply unwound part of the reagan reductions.

[Jacobin]

2. Nope. Raygun had the biggest increase

if you consider payroll and income taxes together.

Paul Krugman had a piece on it in the NYT in the last day or two.

[redqueen]

3. The proof says otherwise

and apparently, even staunch conservatives like Bartlett are more ready to embrace reality than many of those who have taken the massive doses of spin as gospel!

[ramapo]

4. Fairly well accepted fact

The Reagan tax increase is well documented and pretty much ignored. It undid some of the damage of the earlier cuts.

This pesky fact does little to obscure Reagan's legacy as the primier tax cutter of all time.

Never let reality intrude on fantasy. That is the real lesson to be learned from the Reagan years.

[redqueen]

5. The tragic thing is

that it's this very denial of reality that's helping to send this nation over a cliff economically speaking. Reagan may have resisted undoing the damage he did, but he did it. Bush... not so much. And the result? Do the ruling class even care?

:scared:

Someone on this forum said there should be a word for 'eating the seed corn'. I agree. There certainly should be, and a description of Reaganomics should be placed next to the definition in the dictionary.