Politics

FLASHBACK: Joe Biden Voted For The Reagan Tax Reform He Now Claims ‘Never Worked’

FILE PHOTO - Ronald Reagan Turns 93

Michael Evans/The White House/Getty Images

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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President Joe Biden voted in favor of the tax reform championed by then President Ronald Reagan that he claimed had “never worked” during his Wednesday address before Congress.

Biden’s first address before a joint session of Congress covered a broad range of topics including a number of new programs geared at education and family assistance.

In order to fund those programs, Biden has suggested increasing taxes on the wealthy and on corporations — and he argued in his speech that the “trickle-down-economics” of the Reagan era had “never worked.” (RELATED: Editor Daily Rundown: Money Printer Go Brrr As Biden Pitches $4.05 Trillion In New Spending)

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Biden repeated his claim in a tweet, saying, “Trickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out.”

But Biden voted in favor of Reagan’s 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, HR 4242 and the subsequent 1986 tax reform plan, HR 3838, both of which lowered individual and corporate tax rates and introduced a series of other reforms to the tax code.

Together, the two pieces of legislation were known as the Reagan Tax Cuts that many associate with Reagan’s “trickle-down-economics” plan.

CNN’s John Harwood pointed that out during the speech, tweeting, “Biden: ‘my fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked’ (he voted for the Reagan tax cuts).”