Democrats Lie About Reagan Tax Rates

http://townhall.com/blog/g/eaf7ffd9-ca7f-4a4e-9494-a7893c413356
Posted by: Michael Medved at 9:19 PM, Sept 18, 2008

While telling ABC news that higher taxes were “patriotic,” Senator Joe Biden also repeated the Democratic claim that Obama’s proposed tax hikes meant wealthy people are “still going to pay less taxes than they did under Reagan.” This profoundly misleading claim is based on the worst kind of fuzzy math. At the end of President Reagan’s term twenty years ago, the top marginal tax rate was 28%. Today, it’s 35%. Under Obama and Biden, it would rise to 39.6%. How does a 39.6% rate amount to “less taxes” than a 28% rate? Obviously, it doesn’t. When the Democrats talk about taxes paid “under Reagan” they cite the first months of his term—before the Gipper (and the great tax slasher) succeeded in radically lowering the top tax rate. He inherited a top marginal rate of 70%, then cut it several times to produce the booming economy of the ‘80’s. The tax rates that Obama and Biden favor shouldn’t be associated with Reagan – who cut taxes far below those levels – but rather with Carter who passed on to his GOP successor a staggering, dysfunctional economy even worse than the troubled situation of today. The dishonest Democratic reference to Reagan’s tax rates dishonors the memory of a great president, and demonstrates their own shameless mendacity.