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Reagan preached tax cut gospel to America’s students

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Harry Hope

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Sep 3, 2009, 7:04:00 PM9/3/09
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http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909030020

September 03, 2009

Conservative media take note: Reagan preached tax cut gospel to
America�s students

by Matt Gertz


Putting aside possible ulterior motives, the conservative
http://mediamatters.org/research/200909030013 freak-out
http://mediamatters.org/research/200909020012 over President Obama�s
planned speech to students urging them to stay in school and work hard
is due to fears that Obama will use his platform as an opportunity to
push his agenda on unsuspecting students.

Ironically, that�s exactly what President Reagan did two decades ago.

On November 14, 1988, Reagan addressed and took questions from
students from four area middle schools in the Old Executive Office
Building.

According to press secretary Marvin Fitzwater, the speech was
broadcast live and rebroadcast by C-Span, and Instructional Television
Network fed the program �to schools nationwide on three different
days.�

Much of Reagan�s speech that day covered the American �vision of
self-government� and the need �to keep faith with the unfinished
vision of the greatness and wonder of America� but in the middle of
the speech, the president went off on a tangent about the importance
of low taxes:


Today, to a degree never before seen in human history, one nation, the
United States, has become the model to be followed and imitated by the
rest of the world.

But America's world leadership goes well beyond the tide toward
democracy.

We also find that more countries than ever before are following
America's revolutionary economic message of free enterprise, low
taxes, and open world trade.

These days, whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their
plans for reducing taxes, and other economic reforms that they are
using, copying what we have done here in our country.

I wonder if they realize that this vision of economic freedom, the
freedom to work, to create and produce, to own and use property
without the interference of the state, was central to the American
Revolution, when the American colonists rebelled against a whole web
of economic restrictions, taxes and barriers to free trade.

The message at the Boston Tea Party -- have you studied yet in history
about the Boston Tea Party, where because of a tax they went down and
dumped the tea in the Harbor.

Well, that was America's original tax revolt, and it was the fruits of
our labor -- it belonged to us and not to the state.

And that truth is fundamental to both liberty and prosperity.


During the question-and-answer portion of the event, Reagan returned
to the topic, this time telling the students that lowering taxes
increases revenue:


Q My name is Cam Fitzie and I'm from St. Agnes School in
Alexandria, Virginia. I was wondering if you think that it is possible
to decrease the national debt without raising the taxes of the public?


PRESIDENT REAGAN: I do. That's a big argument that's going on in
government and I definitely believe it is because one of the principle
reasons that we were able to get the economy back on track and create
those new jobs and all was we cut the taxes, we reduced them. Because
you see, the taxes can be such a penalty on people that there's no
incentive for them to prosper and to earn more and so forth because
they have to give so much to the government. And what we have found is
that at the lower rates the government gets more revenue, there are
more people paying taxes because there are more people with jobs and
there are more people willing to earn more money because they get to
keep a bigger share of it, so today, we're getting more revenue at the
lower rates than we were at the higher. And do you know something? I
studied economics in college when I was young and I learned there
about a man named Ibn Khaldun, who lived 1200 years ago in Egypt. And
1200 years ago he said, in the beginning of the empire, the rates were
low, the tax rates were low, but the revenue was great. He said in the
end of empire, when the empire was collapsing, the rates were great
and the revenue was low.


The students probably didn�t know any better, but this is an idea that
has been rejected by virtually every economist not named Larry Kudlow.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200711160007

Do Sean Hannity http://mediamatters.org/research/200909030013 and the
folks at NewsBusters http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909020008 think
President Reagan was engaging in Maoist indoctrination?

Do Glenn Beck http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909020037 and
WorldNetDaily http://mediamatters.org/research/200909020012 think
Reagan was pulling a Mussolini or attempting to assemble his own
Hitler Youth?

Or is it possible that the conservative media has decided that if
Obama is for it � whether �it� means �universal health care� or �stay
in school� � they�re against it?

______________________________________________________

Harry

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