Jon Caldara has tried to enlist a famous Republican in his crusade against Referendums C and D.
The chief of the Independence Institute has distributed some red rubber bracelets stamped “What Would Reagan Do?” Although the accompanying letter doesn’t say so explicitly, the “vote no on C and D” implication is clear.
Quite frankly, we’re amazed that Caldara would ask. Apparently the institute’s library doesn’t have any material that goes back as far as the 1980s.
President Ronald Reagan reversed course on taxes when he had to. More than once.
He was never comfortable doing it, but when he saw it was in the best interest of the country, he signed on the dotted line.
In 1982, just a year after a massive tax cut he had hoped would spur the economy, Reagan signed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act – the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history.
Later that year he signed the Highway Revenue Act of 1982, which raised the gasoline tax $3.3 billion.
And still he wasn’t done. In 1983, faced with future shortfalls in Social Security, Reagan raised the Social Security payroll tax and the Medicare tax.
As governor of California in the late 1960s, he said he’d never raise taxes, but later he thought circumstances required it. In his first year, Reagan agreed to nearly $1 billion in tax increases.
Still, Reagan, much like Gov. Bill Owens, was a devoted tax-cutter with a proud record as a fiscal conservative. But, like Owens, he was a realist when dealing with stubborn economic problems and an outdated tax structure.
Caldara’s misleading use of the Reagan legacy is unlikely to fool anyone. Referendums C and D don’t raise taxes; they would forestall a fiscal crisis by allowing a five- year time-out from provisions of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
What would Reagan do?
He’d do the right thing.
