Larry Kudlow, now chief economic policy adviser to President Trump, wrote the definitive book on the economic policies of Presidents Reagan and Kennedy: “JFK and the Reagan Revolution: The Untold Story of American Prosperity.” The core of the economic policies of Republican Reagan and Democrat Kennedy were quite similar.
When Kennedy entered office, the top income tax rate was 91 percent. Kennedy proposed to cut income tax rates by about 23 percent across the board, reducing that top rate to 70 percent.
Reagan entered office in 1981 proposing a 25 percent income tax rate cut across the board, reducing the top rate to 50 percent. In 1986, he led a bipartisan tax reform effort that reduced rates further, leaving just two rates: a top rate of 28 percent and 15 percent for the middle class, abolishing income taxes for the poor entirely.
For all eight years of his presidency, Reagan also pursued consistent deregulation, sharp restraint of domestic discretionary spending, and restrained monetary policy maintaining a strong dollar.
The Reagan recovery started officially in November 1982, lasting 92 months without a recession, until July 1990, when the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it. That set a new record for the longest ever peacetime expansion.
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