Republican politicians favor lowering the federal tax burden on American households and businesses as much as possible. There’s little doubt on this point, given the party’s track record of pushing tax cuts when the opportunity arises (see 2001, 2003, and 2017, for the most recent examples). But the GOP commitment, implied and explicit at the same time, to never, ever support a net tax increase, under any circumstance, is making sensible lawmaking far more difficult than it should be. It’s time to break free of this counterproductive constraint.
President Ronald Reagan solidified the orientation of the Republican party toward lower taxes with his 1980 campaign, 1981 tax cut, and landslide reelection in 1984. He followed that up with a tax reform in 1986 that lowered the top marginal rate on individuals to 28 percent — a level that had been exceeded for many decades preceding 1986, and which was breached a few short years later by tax hikes enacted in 1990 and 1993.included tax hikes in return for provisions he favored, voters didn’t blame him for breaking a promise. Bush’s problem was that he made a very public commitment to voters and then broke it two years later.
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