Those Tax and Spend Liberals

For decades there's been a right wing misinformation campaign aimed at portraying Democrats as nothing but tax and spend liberals.  Currently we are seeing this very misinformation campaign in full swing with President Obama and especially his reform of access to health care.

Since the Supreme Court has ruled the Affordable Care Act as Constitutional based on Congress' power to tax, Republicans have resorted to labeling the Act as the largest tax increase in history.  Notice they've moved away from calling it tyranny at the moment.  This is standard Republican ideology.  If it comes from a non-Republican president, it's unconstitutional-- or it's tyranny-- or it socialism-- or it will destroy the country-- or it's the largest tax increase in history.  Textbook Republicanism.

Luckily for those of us in the reality-based community, someone actually measured tax increases on the American people since WWII and ranked them in order from largest to smallest.  Crazy I know.

And looky what we get:

The president's reform isn't even close to being the largest tax increase in history.  Facts, though, are not what Republicans are interested in.  They're interested in the sensation of the slogan that will get repeated millions of times on hate radio and the mainstream media.  They really don't care if what they say is a lie.  Them saying it is all the proof they need to convince themselves that it's true.

But, there's more.  When I look at that graph I don't see a rank of the largest tax increases in history.  No I see 7 of the 15 tax increases coming from Republicans.  Of those 7 tax increases 5 are from REAGAN!!  In fact, Reagan increased taxes as a percent of GDP more than any president since Truman.  His 5 tax increases listed above more than triple all the combined taxes in Obamacare.

Surely 7 of the 15 largest tax increases in modern history is quite the stain on a party that prides itself as the small government fiscal conservative lot.  In a sane world such a history would be enough to squash any hopes of maintaining that label.  But sanity has nothing to do with post-George Bush America.

Perhaps while raising taxes Republicans also, oh I don't know...increased spending as well!! Yes they did!  That's right, in addition to issuing 7 of the 15 largest tax increases in modern American history, they also increased spending far more than any of their Democratic counterparts.  They also added over $10 trillion to the federal debt in the same time span. George W. Bush alone added over $1 trillion of new spending to the budget.  And these are our fiscal conservatives?  Well, only if you ask them that is.

It's laughable to imagine the audacity it would take to really think Republicans care anything about spending, deficits, debt or tax increases.  It's also a stretch of historic proportions to even begin to call the GOP the fiscally responsible party.  Conservative they may be. Fiscally conservative, not a chance.