"Reagan," Dick Cheneyonce famously declared, "proved that deficits don't matter."Apparently, that rule only applies when a Republican is sitting in theOval Office

Lie #6: Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
Through thick and thin, this hagiography of Ronald Reagan is central to Republican identity. But as Steve Benenrightly noted, it is President Obama whose stimulus plan delivered thelargest two-year tax cut in history. And as it turns out, what SaintRonnie giveth, he also taketh away.
As predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits.Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan deliverednot the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits.Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Ultimately, Reagan was forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe (a fact John McCainlearned the hard way from Tom Brokaw last October). By the time he leftoffice in 1989, Ronald Reagan nonetheless more than equaled the entiredebt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history.

Lie #10: The rich pay too much in taxes already.
While 60% of Americans in recent Gallup pollsbelieve upper-income people are "paying too little" in taxes, it is anarticle of faith among Republicans that the reverse is true.

In one variant of this argument, Arthur Lafferclaims Barack Obama will have to raise taxes on lower and middle incomeAmericans because "it cannot be done at the high end because thosepeople can get away from it." That assessment echoes George W. Bush,who similarly argued in 2004, "The really rich people figure out how tododge taxes anyway." (They are right in one sense; thanks to the GOP's gutting of the IRS in the 1990's, by 2007 the amount of federal revenue lost to fraud and unpaid taxes catapulted to $300 billion.)

Leave it to Bush's former flunkie Ari Fleischerto make even more comical Tax Week plea on behalf of the nation'sbedraggled wealthy. The top 10% of taxpayers, Fleischer argued, are"supporting virtually everyone and everything" and "their burden keepsgetting heavier." As he put it:

"It's also what's called redistribution of income, and it is getting out of hand."
Oh, it's gotten out of hand all right, just not in the direction Fleischer claims.

As the Center for American Progress noted, the Bush tax cuts delivered a third of their total benefitsto the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And to be sure, their payday wasstaggering. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities detailed, by 2007millionaires on average pocketed $120,000 from the Bush tax cuts of2001 and 2003. Those in the top 1% stashed an extra $45,000 a year. Asa result, millionaires saw their after-tax incomesrise by 7.6%, while the gains for the middle quintile and bottom 20% ofAmericans were a paltry 2.3% and 0.4%, respectively. (Another CBPPstudy demonstrated that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure in the White House.)

And as the New York Times revealed in 2006, the 2003 Bush dividend and capital gains tax cutsoffered almost nothing to taxpayers earning below $100,000 a year.Instead, those windfalls reduced taxes "on incomes of more than $10million by an average of about $500,000." As the Times revealed in a jaw-dropping chart,"the top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000,received more than 70% of the increased tax savings from those cuts ininvestment income." So it should come as no surprise that the incomeshare of the 400 richest Americans doubled over the past decade.

There is, of course, one final GOP meta-myth for Tax Day. Despitetheir best efforts to portray Republicans as the best economic stewardsfor America, the record clearly shows that the stock market and theeconomy over all almost always do better under Democratic presidents.

Lie #3: 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
This canard, too, has been in circulation since last summer. Parroting right-wing papers including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune Review, the McCain campaignargued, "Obama raises taxes on seniors, hard working families to give'welfare' to those who pay none." While Sean Hannity and Rudy Giulianiechoed the "welfare" charge in January, on Monday, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischerkept up the drum beat, deeming Obama's middle class tax cuts a "moralproblem" when "50% of the country gets benefits without paying forthem."

Alas, they do pay for them. As FactCheckamong others noted, Republican conveniently ignore sales, excise andmost of all, payroll taxes. Starting with the first dollar they earn,virtually all American workers pay the 6.2% Social Security tax (onincome up to $97,000) and another 1.45% for Medicare. An analysis bythe Tax Policy Center concluded, "three quarters of filers pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes."

Тут за день так накувыркаешься,
Придешь домой - там ты сидишь!
А чем болтать — взяла бы, Зин,
Сгоняла б лучше в магазин...
Владимир Высоцкий , "Диалог у телевизора"