Is Bush Better Than Reagan?

Ronald Reagan has the reputation of a tax-cutter because of his stirring blarney, and media lies. But in office, whether as governor of California or president of the US, he raised taxes and expanded the government. His first major act as governor was to enact withholding for state income taxes. When people had to come up with the whole amount on April 15th, it was a huge barrier to tax increases. Reagan, like Milton Friedman at the federal level in WWII, made possible a vast increase in taxes with withholding, and then he signed the tax increases while increasing state spending. The late John Schmitz opposed this conservative fraud, and was demonized for being anti-Reagan.

When Reagan was president, he cut taxes once, and raised them six times. He gave amnesty to illegal aliens, ballooned government spending, and vastly increased the deficit. He was such a big spender that Tip O’Neill’s congress passsed less of it that he requested. I’ll never forget one of Reagan’s rare vetoes: of a foreign aid bill that was too small. He was also a militarist and imperialist, a neocon, really, though Bush makes him look good in this area by comparison.

One of Reagan’s federal tax increase bills “closed loopholes” in many areas, and abolished the tax exemption for health insurance premiums. Now Bush want to undo that, he said last night. Indeed, we should undo all of Reagan’s tax increases.

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9:34 am on January 29, 2008