{"id":1196,"date":"2004-04-16T14:46:05","date_gmt":"2004-04-16T21:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/reagans-was-bigger\/"},"modified":"2004-04-16T14:46:05","modified_gmt":"2004-04-16T21:46:05","slug":"reagans-was-bigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/reagans-was-bigger\/","title":{"rendered":"Reagan&#8217;s Was Bigger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"FactCheck.org Treasury Tax Expert to Bush: Clinton's Increase WASN'T The Biggest.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\/article.aspx?docid=173\">FactCheck.org Treasury Tax Expert to Bush: Clinton&#8217;s Increase WASN&#8217;T The Biggest.<\/a><br \/>\nStudy published by Bush&#8217;s Treasury Department contradicts Bush&#8217;s campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Summary<\/p>\n<p>In speeches and fundraising appeals <b>the Bush campaign keeps making a distorted claim<\/b> that Clinton &#8216;s 1993 tax increase &#8212; supported by Kerry &#8212; was &#8221;the biggest in history.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>Republicans have been repeating this gross overstatement for more than a decade<\/b>, but now there&#8217;s less justification for it than ever. The GOP claim is contradicted by a study published last year by the Office of Tax Analysis of Bush&#8217;s own Treasury Department. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>A tax increase in 1942 boosted federal revenues by 71%, for example, as the US geared up for war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Measured in inflation-adjusted 1992 dollars, Roosevelt&#8217;s wartime increase amounted to $73 billion a year, while Clinton&#8217;s increase averaged $35 billion a year (average for the first two years.)<\/p>\n<p>The study said that inflation-adjusted &#8221;constant dollars&#8221; is probably only the second -best measure of the size of a tax increase. &#8221;The single best measure for most purposes is probably the revenue effect as a percentage of GDP.&#8221; That&#8217;s Gross Domestic Product, the way we gauge the size of the economy. Clinton&#8217;s tax increase isn&#8217;t the biggest by that &#8221;best&#8221; measure, either. In the period since 1968, <b>the study said, &#8221;the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was the biggest increase.&#8221; That was the tax increase <i>signed by Ronald Reagan<\/i>, rescinding some of the effects of his huge tax cut passed the year before.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>That 1982 tax increase only slightly exceeded Clinton&#8217;s in inflation-adjusted dollars ($37 billion a year vs.. $32 billion) but it was much bigger in relation to the size of the economy. The &#8217;82 increase amounted to 4.6% of GDP (average for the first two years) while Clinton&#8217;s was 2.7%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FactCheck.org Treasury Tax Expert to Bush: Clinton&#8217;s Increase WASN&#8217;T The Biggest. Study published by Bush&#8217;s Treasury Department contradicts Bush&#8217;s campaign. Summary In speeches and fundraising appeals the Bush campaign keeps making a distorted claim that Clinton &#8216;s 1993 tax increase &#8212; supported by Kerry &#8212; was &#8221;the biggest in history.&#8221; Republicans have been repeating this &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/reagans-was-bigger\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Reagan&#8217;s Was Bigger<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}