Replies

"You ~~Bushbots~~ [newbies] really have gone nuts."

There, I fixed your comment for you. What part of banning Partial Birth Abortion and killing the U.S. - CCCP ABM nuclear defense prohibitions were you having difficulty with, by the way?

Great points.

I would be highly suspicious of someone who signed up December 7, 2003, and who called you a 'Bushbot' in his first post to you.

Most likely a retread who has been banned, and is assuming a new identity.

And, Veracruz......don't take the name of my Savior, and Lord in vain..........please.

Item 3: Rating Judicial Nominees From Newsmax: You will recall back when the Democrats were in charge of the executive and legislative branches of government, they had the American Bar Association involved in the selection of judicial nominees. Many of us had insisted that the ABA should have no special role in picking judges, and indeed, President Bush 43 removed the ABA from this position, something that his father and Ronald Reagan had declined to do.

From a Bruce Bartlett article: Reagan may have resisted calls for tax increases, but he ultimately supported them. In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year, and the Highway Revenue Act of 1982 raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year.

In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.

The following year, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984. This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion.

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again. Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first two years. And the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 raised taxes still more.

The year 1988 appears to be the only year of the Reagan presidency, other than the first, in which taxes were not raised legislatively. Of course, previous tax increases remained in effect. According to a table in the 1990 budget, the net effect of all these tax increases was to raise taxes by $164 billion in 1992, or 2.6 percent of GDP. This is equivalent to almost $300 billion in today's economy.

Reagan was a great President, and a great man, but he was not totally Mr. Conservative.