Via Washington Examiner:
Defending his 1981 tax cuts, President Reagan told a packed ballroom at the 1982 Conservative Political Action Conference:
“Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes — one rich, one poor — both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other?. . . Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?”
Reagan would go on to beat the class warriors of the ’80s, pushing through landmark tax reform that lowered rates, simplified the tax code and cut the number of tax brackets from 16 down to just two.
Unfortunately, the class warriors are back. They are squatting on public property throughout the country chanting, “We are the 99 percent!” This is class warfare in its purest form. And President Obama told ABC News earlier this month that he is “on their side.”
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is leading the fight against these new class warriors. “President Reagan was absolutely right. Instead of policies that make it harder for Americans to rise, let’s lower the hurdles to upward mobility,” Ryan told a packed auditorium at The Heritage Foundation last week. “That’s what the American idea is all about.”