Yesterday Obama apparently told the Republican House Members who visited him something that they found completely incredulous, something clearly unbelievable and unfactual. Something that actually made their eyes roll as they discussed the issues of how to handle hitting our national head on the ever impending debt ceiling.
Republicans attending a White House meeting on Wednesday didn’t take kindly to President Obama telling them tax rates were higher during the Reagan administration. GOP members engaged in a lot of “eye-rolling,” according to a member who was on hand to hear Obama, who invited House Republicans to the White House for discussions on the debt ceiling. [...]
“[The President] made a comment like the tax rate is the lightest, even more than (under former President) Reagan,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) told The Hill following the meeting. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joked that during the meeting, “We learned we had the lowest tax rates in history … lower than Reagan!”
Oh Silly Obama, he thinks we have low taxes. Ho HO. Yeah, well let me just go and disprove that by going to my favorite handy dandy right-wing adjacent Tea Party friendly deficit and spending site - USGovernmentRevenue.com.
This should show him!
Har dee har.. choke, uh... Oops!
Well, gee according to that chart Tax Revenues might be at their lowest point in 50 years. In fact 2011 tax revenues are at 28.65% of GDP, which is the lowest it's been since 1968 where they were 27.74% and Lyndon Johnson was in Office. During the Reagan Era the rates were from 1980-1988:
Year $Billion %GDP
1980 2788.1 31.76 a
1981 3126.8 32.48 a
1982 3253.2 33.10 a
1983 3534.6 31.23 a
1984 3930.9 31.07 a
1985 4217.5 31.95 a
1986 4460.1 32.27 a
1987 4736.4 33.40 a
1988 5100.4 32.86 a
Ok, so that's a bit of a FAIL.
Thinkprogress has some of the reasons why...
That House Republicans find this preposterous is symptomatic of the hold Reagan mythology has over them. After all, for seven of Reagan’s eight years in office, the top tax rate was higher than the current 35 percent. In six of those years, it was 50 percent or more. And every year that Reagan was in office, the bottom tax bracket was higher than the current ten percent.
For a family of four, the “average income tax rate under Reagan in 1983 was 11.06 percent. Under Clinton in 1992, it was 9.18 percent. And under Obama in 2010, it was 4.68 percent.” During Reagan’s time, income tax revenue ranged from 7.8 to 9.4 percent of GDP. Last year, it was 6.2 percent and is not projected to climb back to 9 percent until 2016. In fact, in 2009, Americans paid their lowest taxes in 60 years.
Republicans are very fond of saying that the U.S. has “a spending problem, not a revenue problem.” But the truth is that revenue has plunged due to the recession and to continued misguided tax cuts, and revenue needs to be raised to eventually bring the budget into balance. And Reagan knew that taxes were an important part of the budget equation. After all, he “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years.
Although Reagan is known as a champion tax cutter, he in fact only cut taxes for the wealthiest citizens, while raising taxes on everyone else. Republicans like to say that Reagan tax cuts "increased revenue", but you can't make that claim without admitting that he also raised taxes in a variety of areas, including a signifigant increase in Social Security Taxes.
Via Money.Cnn.com
After Reagan's first year in office, the annual deficit was 2.6% of gross domestic product. But it hit a high of 6% in 1983, stayed in the 5% range for the next three years, and fell to 3.1% by 1988. (By comparison, this year it's projected to be 9% but is expected to drop considerably thereafter.)
So, despite his public opposition to higher taxes, Reagan ended up signing off on several measures intended to raise more revenue.
"Reagan was certainly a tax cutter legislatively, emotionally and ideologically. But for a variety of political reasons, it was hard for him to ignore the cost of his tax cuts," said tax historian Joseph Thorndike.
Two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together "constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime," Thorndike said.
So for those who are saying we're Taxed Too Much or that the idea of raising taxes would either several damage the economy or shock the conscience of a true Reaganite.
Those would be, what's the word? Oh yes, LIES!
Vyan