Kudlow’s Money Politics

Obama’s Misleading Reagan Reference

In President Obama’s latest class-war, tax-the-rich gambit, he has stooped to a new low with misleading and out-of-context quotes from Ronald Reagan. Apparently, the president is now trying to use the Gipper for cover while he attacks Mitt Romney with the so-called Buffett Rule.

In an address this past week, Obama cited a couple of Reagan speeches from June 1985, in which the former president quoted a letter from a wealthy executive who grumbled that he paid less in taxes than secretaries or bus drivers. Obviously, Obama was trying to draw a parallel with Warren Buffett’s complaint that his tax rate is lower than his secretary’s, and to the resulting Buffett Rule, a proposed 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires. With a tongue-in-cheek flourish, Obama referred to Reagan as “that wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior.”

Read my full column here

Larry Kudlow is the author of JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity, written with Brian Domitrovic.
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