The conservative canonization of Ronald Reagan as the patron saint of the tax cut has always been a vexed rite. For one thing, Reagan actually raised taxes in 1982, when the country was sunk in a grim recession and the president’s economic advisers were sounding alarms over the gaping hole created in the federal budget by his 1981 package of tax cuts. Regardless of what has recently been said about the Gipper on the GOP hustings, the awkward truth for conservatives is that he increased taxes to fund government spending, just as Keynesians are supposed to do.
Read Full Article »
