Michael T. Flynn Quotes
What we have to do is we have to make sure that our country is as strong as it can be economically and from a defense standpoint.
Flynn, Michael T. Interview by Martha Raddatz. This Week, ABC News, 10 July 2016.
This was a fundamental principle of the Republican party in the middle of the 20th century. However, by the end of that century, Republican doctrine, with the support of the Military-Industrial Complex {641114}, had changed to place defense spending as the highest priority—so much so that the huge deficits created by the massive defense spending weakened the financial solvency that Eisenhower had warned that was more fundamental.
Kennedy, with great Republican support proposed a reduction of the top income tax rate from 91% to 65%, reduction of the bottom rate from 20% to 14%, and a reduction in the corporate tax rate from 52% to 47%. That put the tax rates at the appropriate level. Economic growth was reasonable until President Reagan’s military spending cold war strategy produced huge deficits, Clinton raised the tax rates slightly and had the best economic growth ever, and had a balanced budget. George W. Bush lowered taxes had much slower growth and even larger deficits. However, by 2013 all hints of bipartisanship were gone. The Republicans claimed that the then tax rates were much too high—the highest income tax was half the rate that most agreed in 1962 was the right rate. And the corporate tax was 35 %, far lower than the Kennedy rate of 47% and incredibly lower when we consider that with deductions that were then in force the average corporate tax was only 12% the lowest since the Great Depression. Meanwhile the 2008 Bush Economic Meltdown and the Great Recession it produced the highest deficits in history with the lowest taxes in modern times and much of the polarized population demanding further tax cuts and an equal number demanding increased tax revenue.
