GOP Can’t Handle The Truth: Taxes Are Lower Under Obama Than Reagan

[democracy1st]

President Obama met with House Republicans recently at the White House to discuss ways to move forward on negotiations regarding the nation’s debt ceiling and the budget. During the discussion, talk evidently turned to taxes, and when Obama noted that taxes today are lower than they were under President Reagan, the GOP, according to The Hill, “engaged in a lot of ‘eye-rolling’“:

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 Regan 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.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/01/233526/taxes-lower-reagan/

[elleng]

1. And, for more repug eye-rolling, his programs caused huge deficits.

[EC]

2. The reason they roll their eyes is because

the one year of Reagan's lower tax rate is all they remember or claim. Sure the middle class and poor paid more under Reagan (28%)(now we pay 15%) but that is also the rate the higher incomes paid too, so the lower tax rate was spread to more people to equal out a lower tax rate for the rich. As usual they ask the rest of us to pay for the cuts to the rich.