President Clinton has claimed that he and his administration are responsible for our present prosperity. Economists say otherwise. They say it was President Reagan's 25 percent income tax reductions, Alan Greenspan's successful managing of our nation's credit by keeping inflation down, and our Republican Congress for keeping taxes down.
Recently I read an extreme liberal article in which it was written that Franklin D. Roosevelt led America out of the Great Depression. This is certainly questionable.
The following information came from librarians in Oak Harbor. Presidents' Coolidge and Hoover and Republican congresses had set the top income rate of 25 pecent. When Roosevelt and his Democrats got control of Congress, they raised the top tax rates to 63 percent in 1933 and to 79 percent in 1936. In 1944, during World War, they had the rate up to to 94 percent. In 1950, under President Truman the Democrats became generous and lowered the tax rate to 71 percent. Today, our federal income tax rates are 15, 28, 31, 36 and 39.6 percent.
Under Republican President Ronald Reagan, taxes were reduced 25 percent and this brought the nation out of President Carter's severe recession. Roosevelt could have brought us out of the Depression had he kept tax rates low instead of raising them.
Roosevelt had as one of his advisors a Communist. I remember seeing his picture in the papers. Roosevelt died during his fourth term. Afterward, Congress approved a constitutional amendment restricting a president to two terms. Roosevelt will go down in history as the only president who had four terms, had a Communist as an advisor and raised taxes during the Great Depression.
Roosevelt certainly did not lead America out of the Great Depression with his huge tax increases even before the war started. His Depression caused untold suffering by the American people for many years. Even in 1950, with tax rates as high as 71.75 percent under Truman's Democratic administration, we couldn't have prosperity with these tax rates.
The Vietnam War started during President Eisenhower's administration. He said we should not get involved in the fighting. Eisenhower, a Republican kept us out of the Vietnam War. Later, Democrat Lynden B. Johnson became president and got us involved. Had Eisenhower or another Republican, and not Johnson been president, maybe those 58,000 casualties would not have died in Vietnam.
These are some of the things those three Democratic presidents did to the American people.
ROBERT L. EGGERMAN
Coupeville