Governor Daniels has raised some eyebrows by saying it’s “time to let Reagan go.”
“Nostalgia is fine and Reagan’s economic plan was good,†Daniels said. “But we need to look towards the future rather than staying in the past.â€
Every now and again (most notably shortly before an election), Governor Daniels says some sensible things. Limbaugh is apparently pissed off and the conservative crowd to which Daniels was speaking did not react too kindly to his suggestion.
The thing is, modern day Republicans have made quite a fetish of Ronald Reagan. His myth is barely recognizable when compared to the reality. For example, he is supposedly some sort of model of small government and fiscal responsibility. We must never speak of his skyrocketing government spending or of his tax increases. Why the social conservatives get behind him is confusing. The guy was a divorcee who rarely, if ever, went to church. There were some good things about Reagan, of course — he couldn’t have maintained his popularity otherwise. By and large, he made Americans feel good about themselves again after a period where there had been a lot of self-doubt.
Daniels is probably right that the devotion to Reagan is limiting the Republican Party at this point. During the GOP primaries, each candidate was trying to out-Reagan the others. Even if you think Reagan was the best President ever, there still has to be recognition that the man was a product of his times, and the policies he championed for those times might not be the appropriate policies for the future. This notion probably makes perfect sense to a practical guy like Daniels. But, to idealogues convinced that Reagan was some sort of secular prophet, the notion that Reagan’s policies weren’t eternal truths is a sort of heresy. Let the crucifixions begin.
Well put….
To me it just signals the true colors of today’s Republican- more of the country club mold, as Limbaugh said, and far less of the limited government mold.
True, true, true that today’s GOP basks in the nostogia of the Reagan mythology, for he wasn’t really that great on pruning the size of government, but a lot of conservatives- especially the fiscal conservatives like me- would be a lot happier with a major party embracing such principles. Instead, Daniels really tells it like it is- the GOP is the other party of big government, merely representing a different set of interests.
Just another reason that Mitch ain’t my man.
I have a strong Reagan “fetish”. You can say whatever you want about his Presidency, the guy had a well thought out philosophy which he put to paper over the years in a weekly newspaper column between the time he left office in California and the time he took office as President.
That philosophy is the one I want guys like Daniels to embrace.
Regarding Reagan and taxes, the idea that he raised them, while perhaps technically correct in some arcane way, is not true on substance. The top marginal tax rate went from 70% to 28% on his watch. When he left office, there were two income tax rates, 15% and 28%. That is quite an achievement, as was the entire 1986 tax reform/ simplification package.
The current FAA debacles remind me of that zany time when Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers.
Don’t democrats have a Clinton fetish?
Although if you’re going to have a “fetish,” his would be more fun;-)
Payroll taxes went up. Top marginal income taxes went down. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. There was a neat trick involved with the payroll taxes — they were increased as a means to stabilize social security. But, currently the Social Security surplus is being used to fund general expenditures. The general fund issues treasury notes to the Social Security fund.
Effectively what has happened, then, is that an increase in the payroll tax has been used to decrease the top marginal tax rates. Hooray for trickle down economics.
Just a little myth-busting to put this Reagan stuff back into perspective:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
“As President Reagan entered office in 1981 he repeatedly called for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, yet never submitted a balanced budget himself. Many on the right reflexively blame the Democratically controlled Congress for the “big spending†during his administration, even though Republicans controlled the Senate for the first six years of his two terms. Only during the last two years of the Reagan administration was the Congress completely controlled by Democrats, and the records show that the growth of the debt slowed during this period. It appears that the frequently referenced Reagan’s Conservative mythology is contrary to the truth, he was an award winning, record setting liberal spender.”
I still remember Stockman saying that Reagan intended to push up spending so as to have an excuse to downsize or eliminate Social Security. It truly was voodoo economics.
Doug, payroll taxes don’t count. Seriously.
Look, you Democrats can’t treat Socialist Insecutiy as a pension program on one hand and then complain that “payroll taxes went up”.
By Democrat logic, they’re pension contributions, not taxes. By the same logic, everything paid in will one day be paid out (unless you’re the average Afrcian-American male, and you don’t make it to 65).
Even the “Social Security Surplus” is in the “Social Security Trust Fund” and will be paid back.
Okay, we all know this is bullshit, but whose fault is it anyway? Reagan’s? I don’t think so.
We had the opportunity to privatize SS in 1983, and we failed to do so, not because of Reagan, but because of Democrats.
Hey Pat, there was this little thing called the Cold War. That spending won it. You might want to look into it while you’re “mythbusting”.
Reagan also showed us how to deal with two bit Arab dictators. My 10th grade English teacher’s son was the back seater on the F-14 that shot down the Lybian jet over “The Line of Death”. He can to class one day and showed us the gun cam video of the shootdown.
Shortly thereafter, Reagan sent in F-14’s to bomb Qadaffi’s tent. ;)
Don’t democrats have a Clinton fetish?
I think that after the South Carolina primary, the Clinton fetish is gone!
I don’t think the haigography of Clinton has ever come anywhere near that of Reagan.
Yeah, Reagan showed those Arabs! Well, except for our buddy at the time, Saddam Hussein. Oh, and Hezbollah, when Reagan pulled out of Lebanon real quick after the 1983 Marine barracks bombing. Oh, and Iran…”we’ll never negotiate with terrorists…except for those in Iran, and we’ll sell them weapons in exchange for hostages, etc.”
Sometimes Reagan sold arms to two-bit dictators. Just sayin’. Sometimes he did that because he was friendly with the guy (Saddam Hussein), and other times (Iran), he only did it when he wanted to circumvent Congress to illegally fund a civil war in Nicaragua.
Doug’s points about the payroll tax are dead on. Those funds aren’t in a “lockbox”. They are just borrowed for regular expenditures. Pretending it’s not a tax that “counts” somehow is just silly.
Doug’s points about the payroll tax are dead on. Those funds aren’t in a “lockboxâ€. They are just borrowed for regular expenditures. Pretending it’s not a tax that “counts†somehow is just silly.
Of course it is dead on. But it’s DEMOCRATS (you know, YOUR party) that ensures that the silliness endures.
I don’t think that either you are Doug have any idea how SS really works, either. The Socialist Insecurity Administration is keeping track of what you pay into the system, and your benefits are calculated with a formula that takes into account that number. So benefits are linked to those taxes, thus helping prolong the charade that SS is a pension.
And like a pension, SS does have assets. The “surplus” is “invested” in T-bills. Like a pension, those assets will one day be sold to pay benefits.
The difference is that if a pension were as underfunded as SS, the people running that pension would go to jail.
And, of course, SS is largely pay-as-you-go, and pensions are not.
So… are they taxes or are they contributions? That’s an either-or question. Don’t be a typical Democrat and call them contributions when defending SS and taxes when hammering Ronald Reagan for saving the system Democrats made.
Why are you guys bashing Reagan for the arms-for-hostages deal? That’s going to be Obama’s foreign policy should he become President.
Oh, I know. You’re still pissed that the profits were used to fund the Contras.
Damn, you just HAVE to love Ollie North. Just a brilliant, brilliant man.
Then you’re asking poor questions. Because the answer is neither. . . or both. It’s more of an insurance premium. Your benefit is larger if you pay more, but your benefit is not strictly tied to your “premium.” If, for example, your Dad dies, you can get money even if you haven’t paid in . . . and, you can get more money than he paid into the system.
(Incidentally, I recall a torts professor spending a lot of time telling us that, as a matter of logic, when we’re dividing up the universe, our categories should be “X” or “Not X” — any other division is going to leave gaps.)
Whatever. The point is that, unlike welfare, the benefit is tied in some way to what you paid in. That the benefits are progressive or that there is an insurance component does not change that simple fact.
The Democrat talking point at the time of reform was that the rate of return on your Social Security “investment” was going down, not that taxes were being increased.
I just realized that I let you get away with another BS comment: that lowered marginal rates at the top mean that the rich got all the benefits.
Read Trump’s second “autobiography”. He blames his first bankruptcy to the 1986 tax reform! All those real estate trust loopholes were closed, and he blames that for his bankruptcy in ’88 (I believe).
Going off memory here, my mind is not as tight as T’s, despite the megadoses of Ginsing and whatnot.
Oh– it’s invested in T-bills! That’s so much different than saying the money is collected from us and then borrowed out of the social security fund and put into general spending, later to be paid back, with interest, with government funds–government funds which will come from taxpayers.
If Mitch is pissing off Rush, then he may not be THAT bad…
That’s so much different than saying the money is collected from us and then borrowed out of the social security fund and put into general spending, later to be paid back, with interest, with government funds–government funds which will come from taxpayers.
Well, to keep the pension analogy going, who is paying for all those stocks and bonds that pensions have to sell to pay retirees? Is it really any different?
In any case, I’m not going to defend Socialist Insecurity to a bunch of Democrats. If you don’t like the program, you’re going to have to start voting Republican, because the Democrats aren’t going to fix it.
And if you think payroll taxes are too high, why are you an Obama supporter, T? He’s going to uncap payroll taxes!
Think about that for a minute. You’re the guy complaining that you pay the employer and employee portion of the payroll tax. But you only pay that up to the limit (currently $98k).
How’d you like to pay that on ALL your income?
That’s a huge tax increase.
People making over $150k already have marginal tax rates over 50% because of all the phaseouts at that income level. You uncap the payroll tax, and you’re talking European levels of taxation for the self employed.
Because I don’t only vote based on short-term economic self-interest.
T –
Are you the T in these T-Bills I keep hearing about?
If so, how do you get into that kind of gig? Do I need to go by a single initial?