Last fall, when President Obama debuted the Buffett Rule — the simple idea that millionaires and billionaires should pay at least the same tax rate as middle class workers — we climbed into the wayback machine and found a video of President Ronald Reagan decrying “crazy” tax loopholes (originally stated on June 6, 1985) that allowed a millionaire to pay a lower tax rate than a bus driver.

With the Senate set to vote one week from today on a Buffett Rule bill that would make sure millionaires and billionaires pay a minimum tax rate of 30 percent, we now present another video of former President Reagan supporting the principle behind the Buffett Rule (originally stated on June 28, 1985).  In today’s video, President Reagan describes a letter he received from an executive who wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why it’s “wrong” that he was able to “take advantage of the present tax code” to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. Watch it:

Sounds pretty familiar.

We need to build an economy that works for everyone, not just the privileged few.  We can start by passing the Buffett Rule to make sure millionaires and billionaires can no longer take advantage of unfair tax loopholes to pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class workers.

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Republican lawmakers who vote for tax increases are “rat heads in a Coke bottle,” anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said during a speech Friday at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, a conservative gathering where he was a featured speaker.

Last week, Norquist called Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval a “rat” for supporting tax increases. This week, Norquist expanded the attack, saying that the same way Coca-Cola would lose customers if a rat head was found in a Coke bottle, Republicans voting for tax increases “damage the brand.” Instead, Norquist said, the GOP needs conservatives like former President Ronald Reagan who oppose taxes at all costs:

NORQUIST: Don’t raise taxes. Tax reform? Sure. Reduce rates, broaden the base, like Reagan did. … No net tax increases! [...]

Republican elected officials who vote for tax increases are rat heads in a Coke bottle.

Watch it:

By invoking Reagan to make his case, however, Norquist is again ignoring Reagan’s legacy. Reagan was a serial revenue raiser, hiking taxes a total of 11 times and in seven of his eight years in office. His 1982 tax increase was the largest peacetime increase in American history, and contrary to Norquist’s anti-tax beliefs, was immediately followed by “exceptionally strong” economic and job growth.

Norquist, of course, is well aware of Reagan’s tax raising legacy, he just chooses to ignore it. In a recent appearance on The Daily Show, Norquist laughably refused to criticize Reagan, saying he didn’t hold the tax increases against the conservative hero because “he hadn’t signed the pledge.”

Republicans have continually decried the Obama Administration’s “runaway spending” since he took office, blaming him for growing deficits and a mounting national debt. But a quick glance at the facts show that, compared to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, Obama is actually embracing fiscal conservatism more than any other president in recent history, with the exception of fellow Democrat Bill Clinton.

The Atlantic crunches the numbers:

For all the talk you hear about Obama’s historic spree, government spending actually hasn’t increased so dramatically under this president. The stimulus was big, but it’s over. It’s been replaced by, if not austerity (which has struck our states and cities) then a hard correction to the center.

Evidence of the cost-cutting measures employed by Obama can be found in the last several jobs reports. While the overall number of jobs created has steadily increased for the last several months, those advances have all come entirely in the private sector. Public sector jobs have actually been on the decline for much of the last year as government spending on some agencies and programs have been cut.

Economics Professor Mark Thoma provides a helpful chart on his blog that puts President Obama’s per capita spending into context, comparing it with the spending of every president in the last 40 years.

That’s likely a hard pill to swallow for Obama’s critics, who have spent years hammering his administration for record spending and fiscal irresponsibility. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson put it best: “Going by federal expenditures…it would seem that if Obama’s a socialist, Ronald Reagan is Karl Marx with an ICBM.”

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist — who said last month that he would not approve of tax increases even in the case of war, natural disaster or “beard flu” — has come under fire over the last year from Republican lawmakers who signed his pledge requiring them to oppose all new taxes. Lawmakers have slammed the Norquist pledge as “disingenuous and irresponsible,” saying it “restrains your ability to think creatively” and takes away the “flexibility to do the right thing for the American people.”

On The Daily Show last night, host Jon Stewart asked Norquist if former President Ronald Reagan should be admonished for his tax-increasing ways. Reagan, after all, was a serial tax-raiser both as governor of California and later as president. But Norquist refused to criticize Reagan, laughably excusing the tax increases because Reagan “hadn’t signed the pledge”:

STEWART: I mean, Reagan raised taxes, I don’t know, seven times, eight times?

NORQUIST: And George Washington lost the Battle of New York. It wasn’t on purpose. Reagan didn’t want to raise taxes.

STEWART: Wait, Reagan didn’t want to raise taxes, but he did it eight times?

NORQUIST: He had a Congress with whom he raised taxes a number of times. [...] The ’82 tax increase, which was the large one, he said was the biggest mistake of his presidency because of course remember he was promised, ‘Oh, if you raise taxes we’ll give you three dollars of spending cuts.’

STEWART: But then he kept raising them. ’82, ’83, ’85, I have a whole list here. So, would you have run somebody against him?

NORQUIST: No.

STEWART: Why not?

NORQUIST: One, he hadn’t signed the pledge.

Watch it (at 3:10):

The 1982 tax increase Norquist is excusing was the largest peacetime tax increase in American history, and calling it the “biggest mistake” of the Reagan presidency requires ignoring the fact that it was immediately followed by “exceptionally strong” economic growth and falling unemployment. And if the 1982 increase was Reagan’s biggest mistake, he didn’t show much contrition during the rest of his presidency — he went on to raise taxes in seven of his eight years in office.

There have been no shortage of Ronald Reagan mentions on the campaign trail, with Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum invoking the former president’s name at seemingly every turn. Each argues that only he is truly like Reagan, and that only his massive, budget-busting tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans is in the true spirit of Reagan’s legacy.

Today, on what would have been Reagan’s 101st birthday, his former economist published an editorial — titled “Why the GOP should stop invoking Reaganomics” — in the Washington Post telling the candidates to stop it with the name-dropping. Bruce Bartlett, who served under both Reagan and George H.W. Bush, outlined the differences between today’s economic circumstances and those of the Reagan years, positing that while curbing inflation was the biggest issue in the Reagan era, today’s economic policies must be focused on boosting demand.

The result of those differences, Bartlett wrote, is that Reagan’s policies “can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today”:

Judging from the candidates’ tax proposals, they seem to believe that the most Reagan-like candidate is the one with the biggest tax cut. But as the person who drafted the 1981 Reagan tax cut, I think Republicans misunderstand the premises upon which Reagan’s economic policies were based and why those policies can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today. [...]

All of the evidence tells us that the economy’s fundamental problem today is not on the supply side but the demand side. According to a recent study by Credit Suisse, two-thirds of the difference in growth at this point in the business cycle, compared with previous cycles, is due to slower consumer spending. And low inflation — as well as widespread unemployment, vast stocks of unsold houses, empty factories and other indicators — tells us that money is tight, not loose, as was the case in the late 1970s.

Bartlett isn’t the only one noting the weakness of the GOP’s plans to bolster the economic recovery. Multiple economics professors told Reuters that the Republican plans wouldn’t pass an Econ 101 class. The candidates’ economic proposals will explode the deficit, expand income inequality through massive tax breaks to the rich, and hurt the poor and middle classes if enacted, but the GOP continues to ignore evidence that today’s situation is different than Reagan’s.

“Economic conditions are entirely different today than they were in Reagan’s era, and different conditions demand different policies,” Bartlett concluded. “Those who say otherwise are simply engaging in cookie-cutter economics — proposing whatever was popular and seemed to work once, without regard to changing circumstances.”

Much has been said in recent days after Mitt Romney revealed that his effective tax rate is close to 15 percent — below that of many middle-class Americans — because much of his income comes from investment gains, which are taxed at lower rates than normal wages.

But Flyod Norris reminds us in the New York Times today that “unearned income” from investments was not always taxed at a lower rate than earned income. For two years, thanks to Republican icon Ronald Reagan, capital gains and earned income were treated equally:

For most of the history of income taxes in America, long-term capital gains — defined at different times as investments held for minimum periods of as little as six months and as long as 10 years — have been taxed at substantially lower rates than top ordinary income tax rates.

There was, in fact, only one time that capital gains were taxed at the same rates that were paid by people who earned their money by working. That was during the years 1988 to 1990, as a result of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 — a law championed by President Ronald Reagan.

Reagan’s Vice President, George H.W. Bush, convinced Reagan and Congress to lower the rate again as he was preparing to run for the presidency, and the capital gains rates was subsequently lowered to today’s rate of 15 percent by his son, President George W. Bush, as part of his 2003 tax cut. As Citizens for Tax Justice has noted, Reagan’s tax increase did not cause investment to fall, as many anti-tax ideologues had predicted.

During a 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, CBS’ Lesley Stahl asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) about the GOP’s intransigence when it comes to raising any new federal revenue, pointing out that Cantor’s hero, Ronald Reagan, raised taxes when the occasion called for it. Before Cantor could even attempt to explain anything, one of his spokesmen, Brad Dayspring, interrupted the interview, taking issue with the notion that Reagan increased taxes:

STAHL: What’s the difference between compromise and cooperate?

CANTOR: Well, I would say cooperate is let’s look to where we can move things forward where we agree. Comprising principles, you don’t want to ask anybody to do that. That’s who they are as their core being.

STAHL: But you know, your idol, as I’ve read anyway, was Ronald Reagan. And he compromised.

CANTOR: He never compromised his principles.

STAHL: Well, he raised taxes and it was one of his principles not to raise taxes.

CANTOR: Well, he– he also cut taxes.

STAHL: But he did compromise–

CANTOR: Well I –

DAYSPRING: That just isn’t true. And I don’t want to let that stand.

Watch it:

Dayspring has had some trouble with the facts regarding taxes before, but the notion that it “just isn’t true” that Reagan raised taxes is absurd. He raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office, including one stretch of four tax increases in just two years. As Paul Krugman put it, “no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people.” Reagan also completely equalized the tax treatment of investment income with that of wage income, a position putting him to the left of many of today’s Democrats, never mind Republicans.

Cantor’s office tried to clarify later that Dayspring’s remark “referred to the cumulative effect of Mr. Reagan’s tax policies, pointing out that he cut taxes more than he raised them, and that Mr. Reagan expressed regret making tax deals with Democrats because the spending cuts they agreed to never materialized.” But the point is, as historian Douglas Brinkley put it, “Ronald Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes. He knew that it was necessary at times. And so there’s a false mythology out there about Reagan as this conservative president who came in and just cut taxes and trimmed federal spending in a dramatic way. It didn’t happen that way. It’s false.” And this is a truth that today’s GOP just hasn’t been able to handle.