Obama’s delusional Reagan obsession

And here I thought Republicans were obsessed with Ronald Reagan! The reality is that President Obama is obsessed with America’s 40th President, because he thinks (misguidedly) that he can win points with voters who may have forgotten Reagan’s record on taxes. Check out both the video and the text of his recent comments.

Obama seems to think that he is either following in Reagan’s footsteps or that Reagan was on net a tax hiker. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reagan dropped the top marginal tax rate dramatically as the chart below illustrates (see 1981-1989 for those with short memories):

Reagan DID in fact attempt to close some loopholes with his 1986 reforms, but unlike Obama, he was a net tax-cutter, not tax hiker. That is not to say that there are not plenty of loopholes in the tax code. There are and some, like the mortgage deduction and the tax advantages for businesses that purchase health care for their employees.

The simple fact is that spending is the problem, not taxation.