On the recordNovember 29, 2012
let me elaborate a little bit on what the Senator from Ohio just said. I think it is important to remember that the whole idea was a Democratic idea and not a Republican idea. Some of us remember. We were not actually here at the time, but in the 1960s during the Kennedy administration--of course, the last time I checked he was a Democrat--he was the one who made this statement. I have quoted him very often. He said, We need more revenue to take care of the great society programs that he had kind of inherited and was furthering. He said, The best way to increase revenue is to decrease marginal rates. He did that. I remember the top rate went down from 90 percent to 70 percent, and during his period of time, the total amount of revenue that came from marginal rates raised from $94 billion to $153 billion. Then, a few years later, along came Ronald Reagan and the total amount of revenue that was raised for marginal rates in the year 1980 was $244 billion and in 1990 it was $466 billion, which almost doubled in the decade that had the most streamlining and reduced reduction in marginal rates in our history. So I think it is interesting to observe that this is not--it wasn't all a Republican idea, but it is something that has worked every time it has been tried.
