- "Back in the 70s a Republican strategist [and Reagan advisor] named Jude Wanniski came up with what he called the two Santa Claus theory: when Republican are in power they should cut taxes, spend like drunken sailors and put it all on the national credit card--without ever mentioning a word about the deficit they were creating. This allows Republicans to be the tax cutting Santa Claus and the spending/stimulus Santa Claus."--Thom Hartmann, progressive radio host and author, 6/1/10
In 1980, the Republicans' first official Santa Claus, Ronald Reagan, cut income taxes on wealthy Americans from 70% down to 27%, and reduced Corporate taxes until they accounted for less than 9% of federal tax revenues, instead of the 33% they represented in 1951.
It was called supply-side economics (a.k.a Reaganomics, Voodoo economics, or the "trickle-down theory"), and it claimed that if we cut taxes on wealthy Americans, they would invest that money in such wonderful ways that it would stimulate the economy, and benefits would "trickle down" to all Americans.
Of course, like most Republican theories, it didn't work--unless its real purpose was to bankrupt the government and destroy the American middle-class. In that case, it is working pretty well.
- In 1982, the first full year for Reagan's policies, the economy shrank by 2%, the worst performance since the Great Depression. -- Robert Freeman, CommonDreams.org, 5/14/06
- "Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!"-- Allen W. Smith, Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Eastern IllinoisUniversity, Dissident Voice, 4/14/10
After a brief period of fiscal sanity during the Clinton Administration, George W. Bush was appointed President and took up right where Reagan and Poppa Bush had left off--cutting taxes for the rich, raising "defense" spending and starting wars; and paying for it all on the taxpayer's credit card. Bush's final year budget showed a record deficit of $1.4 trillion, and he had increased the National Debt to $9.849 trillion--the largest increase by any President in U.S. history.
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America is now mired in the Great Recession, and we need to do the same thing that Roosevelt did to save us from the Great Depression--raise taxes on the wealthy. They can afford it:
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