Wrong. The president doesn’t have the power to raise taxes. That privilege is reserved for Congress. Reagan might have signed tax increases proposed by Congress, but, literally speaking, HE did not raise taxes.
Bingo! He approved tax increases. He compromised with a Democrat Congress to get things done. His ideology generally won the day... but he did have to make some concessions... remember amnesty? He held up his side of the bargain... Congress did not.
It bothers me when ideologues on both sides ignore history. It bothers me ever more when they try to change it.
It’s so absurd it’s almost funny. If ordinary Americans remember President Reagan as a tax-cutter rather than a tax-raiser, it’s not because they are victims of some kind of elaborate deception perpetrated by the Great Communicator. It’s because President Reagan, well, cut tax rates.
Even the left-leaning web site Slate didn’t buy the "1982-biggest-peacetime-tax-increase in history" line when it was used against one of its congressional creators, Sen. Robert Dole, in the 1996 presidential campaign. Slate said, “most of Dole's tax increase was actually the partial repeal of future tax cuts that had been enacted in 1981 but had not yet taken place. Despite Dole's bill, taxpayers received more than $375 billion in tax cuts over the following three years… Almost $50 billion of Dole's 1982 projected revenue was supposed to come from cracking down on tax cheats, by adding staff to the IRS, and requiring financial institutions to withhold interest and dividends the way employers withhold wages. (This provision was repealed the next year, before it could take effect.) Is getting people to pay taxes they already owe but would otherwise escape a ‘tax increase’?”
Look closely, because this is likely to be the first and last time I ever quote Reason magazine to make a point about Ronald Reagan.