[fortheDeclaration]

Get a load of ftD's latest logic: In just over four years Abe Lincoln can TRIPLE the U.S. tariff schedule, impose the nation's first-ever income tax across the board on everybody who is in the middle class or higher, double the rates of that tax and lower the income threshold of its upper brackets only three years later, and enact a complex system of additional internal excises, duties and other taxing schemes and it's all okay because it's only a "war measure."

Well, it was!

War does require high taxes.

But if Ronald Reagan signs a bill that includes, among its minor provisions, a section that gradually increases the Social Security tax by a mere sixty-five hundredths of a single percentage point over the course of seven years it's treated as the most horrible and burdensome tax increase to hit the United States since FDR!

That 'minor'tax increase was the third largest peacetime tax increase in our history.

Now the point of this discussion was that Reagan had no qualms about raising taxes if necessary, as did Lincoln.

[GOPcapitalist]

Well, it was!

The Morrill Tariff was drafted over a year before the war. All those other taxes were retained for several years after the war ended. "War measures" are initiated during the war and get repealed at their conclusions.

War does require high taxes.

So did peace, evidently, in the minds of Lincoln and the Radical Republicans.

That 'minor'tax increase was the third largest peacetime tax increase in our history.

By what measure? In terms of percentage increases on the Social Security tax as measured over comparable seven year periods, Reagan's increase of .65% was the SMALLEST since the Truman administration.