Ronald Reagan's Budget Director Says Repeal the Tax Cuts: Republicans "Should be Ashamed"

Submitted by mark karlin on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 5:55pm.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG FOR TRUTHOUT BY MARK KARLIN

Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter who helped craft the Disneyesque aura for Ronald Reagan, wrote a book, "What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era." It lavished praise on the "Gipper."

David Stockman, who was Reagan's budget director, has gone in another direction. He's renouncing deficit-building tax cuts, calling for their rollback.

"We've had a 30-year spree of really phony prosperity in this country," Stockman recently told Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes."

Stockman derided the "anti-tax religion" of the GOP.

"Well it's become in a sense an absolute. Something that can't be questioned, something that's gospel, something that's sort of embedded into the catechism and so scratch the average Republican today and he'll say 'Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts,'" Stockman told Stahl. He added, "To stand before the public and rub raw this anti-tax sentiment, the Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves."

In short, tax cuts provide the illusion to the American public that Social Security, Medicare, military spending and government funded public expenditures - such as highways - can be had without citizens paying a fair share.

As for the wealthy, Stockman was loaded for bear in another appearance, this one on ABC News: "Two years after the crisis on Wall Street, it has been announced that bonuses this year will be $144 billion, the highest in history. That's who's going to get this tax cut on the top, you know, 2 percent of the population. They don't need a tax cut. They don't deserve it."

When Stockman declares, "We're now becoming the banana republic [of] finance," wise men and women should listen.

After all, he was the person who put together the largest tax cuts in US history. He knows of what he speaks.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/11933