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Reagan White House Officials: Where the Right Went Wrong (VIDEO)

Posted: 02/15/2012 5:11 pm

In separate interviews with Bill Moyers for Moyers & Company, David Stockman and Bruce Bartlett, senior architects of Ronald Reagan's economic policy, have harsh words for the staunch anti-tax position of modern conservatives.

David Stockman
David Stockman, former Budget Director under President Ronald Reagan who helped devise Reagan's supply-side, or "trickle-down," economic strategy, says today's Republicans have taken their anti-tax campaign too far.

"Taxes are the price we pay for civilization... What [conservative leaders] are saying today is foolish, it's irresponsible. How can anyone believe with the kind of deficit that we have -- a trillion dollars, year after year after year -- that we can keep taxes as low as they are?"



Bruce Bartlett
Economist Bruce Bartlett worked on domestic policy for the Reagan White House and served as a top treasury official under the first President Bush. Now he's a heretic in the conservative circles where he once was a star. When he called George W. Bush out as "a pretend conservative" in his book Impostor: Why George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, Bartlett was fired from his position as a senior fellow at a conservative think tank. Bartlett argues that right-wing tax policies -- pushed in part by Grover Norquist and Tea Party activists -- are destroying the country's economic foundation.

"I think Mr. Bush's support for a tax increase in 1990 was an enormous act of courage that no Republican has been willing to show since, and probably never will... I mean, would you want to be a Republican running in a Republican primary, where Grover Norquist comes in and says, 'This guy must be defeated because he violated the pledge, or he refused to sign the pledge'? The members of the Tea Party don't need to know anything else. That guy's history."




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In separate interviews with Bill Moyers for Moyers & Company, David Stockman and Bruce Bartlett, senior architects of Ronald Reagan's economic policy, have harsh words for the staunch anti-tax positio...
In separate interviews with Bill Moyers for Moyers & Company, David Stockman and Bruce Bartlett, senior architects of Ronald Reagan's economic policy, have harsh words for the staunch anti-tax positio...
 
 
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01:27 AM on 02/23/2012
Grover Norquist is the devil, and I don't think anybody would disagree with that.
04:12 PM on 02/17/2012
Forget about Grover Norquist. Instead, call out the lawmakers who have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge sponsored by the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR). According to the ATR, this Pledge solemnly binds signers to oppose any and all tax increases. No exceptions are permitted. (atr.org) In signing this Pledge, lawmakers appear to violate Rule 6 of the Code of Ethics for Government Service which states “Make no private promises of any kind binding upon the duties of office…” Call on your lawmakers to publicly renounce this Pledge. Read about the Code of Ethics for Government Service at Pages 20 and 436 of the House and Senate Ethics Manuals, respectively. ethics.house.gov and ethics.senate.gov
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ChiBloger
And the truth shall set us ALL free
10:14 AM on 02/17/2012
Here and there we see a Reagan era conservative coming out calling the Republicans of today for being radical in their approach and foolish in their embrace of what amounts to air. The tickle down theory may as well be air. History show us that at the least it was a short term trick to get Republicans elected and rich people richer. At worst a massive fraud that is destabilizing our government and economic system.

Trusting rich greedy people with all the money to out of the goodness of their harts make life even better for the rest of us is now a proven failure. No, it has not been just recently proven a fraud over the past ten years or the past 30 for that matter. Trickle down is exactly what you had in the feudal age. Trust the king with all the nations’ wealth and trust his lords because they are smarter and richer and they know best.

Then time past and many of our ancestors left England and other regions to start the United States of America. The USA, A country which became the richest nation on the face of the earth. Not because we had a king and feudal lords but because we had the biggest wealthiest Middle Class on the face of the earth. Guess what has changed here since trickle down folks?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Elise Von Holten
Dyslexic on-top-of -it all!
07:29 AM on 02/17/2012
AMAZING! Tea party so called Republicans shown to be the doddering idiots that they are--My mothers husband has 11 children all who vote the R ticket-- if they vote--saying, "I don't follow politics much, so I just vote for like Dad", in an "aw, shucks," way--the dad totally irresponsible! No clue about anything because his father was a judge and bailed him out of everything messy he ever got into--the rich are different than us alright! They are often stupid!
05:09 PM on 02/16/2012
deficit is bush tqax cuts for the rich, two unfunded wars price tag $4 trillion at least !
and in
bank fraud and wall street mortgage fraud 4 trillion $ more,

tea bags and republicrites are selfish scarey id iots
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aceshigh11
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone
03:36 PM on 02/16/2012
Bartlett and Stockman are both true Americans who put country above party.

Of course, that makes them treasonous liberals in the eyes of the modern GOP.
01:07 PM on 02/16/2012
In order to be "conservative enough" for some of these people, you have to be completely out of your mind. Properly understood, conservatism is more of an attitude than a set of ill-considered principles. It is the attitide that says: "let's be careful here. We don't want to go running off half-cocked." But it is not the attitude that sees the present, or the past, as the only model for the future.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
suzee q
Sat on the fence, but it don't work.
12:06 PM on 02/16/2012
I watched this over the weekend on Moyers and Co, and was floored. Good job, Bill and tell Mr. Bartlett I'll be buying his book.