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The New Democrat

Actually what Thom Hartmann didn’t bother to mention which I’m sure he already knows this having lived through these periods in his thirties and forties unlike myself who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, is that President George H.W. Bush raised taxes and went back on a campaign promise that probably cost him his reelection in 1992. To deal with high debts and deficits in 1990 that he inherited. Bill Clinton basically finished the job along with a Democratic Congress when it came to deficit reduction of the 1990s. In 1993 with tax hike on the wealthy to go along with strategic budget cuts as well.

The tax hikes that Thom Hartmann talks about were not about economic growth. But deficit reduction and if they didn’t come with budget cuts, the economy and the deficit would’ve been even worst because of the lost economic growth with business’s struggling and even going out of business. The economy of the 1990s partly did better because of deficit reduction. But also because of infrastructure investment, new trade opportunities and middle class tax relief as well. And with the information technology boom of the 1990s.

When Thom Hartmann says he would repeal the Reagan tax cuts, I didn’t hear him say he would just repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy, but the Reagan tax cuts. That could mean the all the tax cuts because the 1981 Economic Recovery Act which I believe is what that bill was called, was across the board tax cut that lowered taxes on everyone and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit. That is tax relief for low-income Americans so they do not have to pay taxes, came from President Reagan as well.