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PDFFrom Center for American Progress:
President Reagan . . . actually increased taxes “in seven of his eight years in office, including one stretch of four tax increases in just two years.”
Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman [noted] that “no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people.”
The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen pitched in with his observation that the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, which was Reagan’s biggest tax hike, is today “generally considered the largest tax increase—as a percentage of the economy—in modern American history.”
Moreover, says Benen, “between 1982 and 1984, Reagan raised taxes four times, and as Bruce Bartlett has explained more than once, Reagan raised taxes 12 times during his eight years in office.”
Benen believes that President Reagan’s legacy makes contemporary conservatives “look ridiculous.”
On MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein took a stab at explaining why this must be the case, noting that the grand poobah behind the “Reagan Legacy Project,” and so much right-wing political thinking and organizing today, is Grover Norquist, who “has a vested interest in promoting the myth of ‘Saint Ronnie the Tax Slayer’ to justify his ‘no new taxes ever’ ideology.”
…
President Obama has lowered taxes more than he has raised them, and they are today lower than they were in President Reagan’s time. But you don’t hear conservatives crowing about that.
No, the real story here is the vehemence of the conservative movement’s commitment to ignoring all forms of evidence that it finds inconsistent with its ideological preconceptions, regardless of circumstances or even consequences.
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