During his failed 1994 Senate race, Mitt Romney tried to reassure liberal Massachusetts voters that "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush; I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush." Now, Reagan's ghost is getting his revenge.

After Romney defended the carried interest exemption that allows him to pay a lower tax rate than many middle-class families, the Gipper's apparition emerged from 1985 to insist that "the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver." And now that Mitt Romney has slandered the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income taxes thanks to measures like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the ghost of Reagan is haunting him once again.

As BusinessWeek explained, it was with good reason that President Reagan described the EITC as "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress."



Reagan strongly supported the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which sends checks to Americans who work but earn less than around $46,000 a year, depending on family size. Recipients of the credit are among those who don't pay income tax, but Reagan never regarded that as a problem. His administration estimated that the 1986 reform of the tax code would remove 6 million working poor from the tax rolls. Reagan called the reform a "sweeping victory for fairness" and "perhaps the biggest antipoverty program in our history."

Which is exactly right.

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