Obama - Read Up on Reagan!

If I were a Democrat trying to get re-elected, I would be studying Ronald Reagan's economic policies very closely. The Republicans play homage to Reagan regularly so perhaps it is time for Democrats to take a lesson from their playbook. Implement Obamanomics based off Reaganomics .

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40 ^th President of the United States . He took office in 1981 and left office in 1989. In 1982, the national unemployment rate was 9.7 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent.

One of the first things Reagan did when he got into office was sign the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 . This act cut taxes but indexed the tax rate increases over time based on inflation. At the peak of the increases, the top 10 percent wage earners were paying 57.2 percent of total income and the income tax for the lower wage earners decreased to 5.7 percent. The income tax on the middle class decreased during the 1980's from 57.5 percent to 48.7 percent of total wages.

Obama has raised the levy on cigarettes, imposed tax penalties on people without insurance, taxed tanning services, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and raised Medicare tax rates for upper-income individuals. However, the current income tax rates are lower now than they were under Reagan. This is simply ridiculous and an indication to me that the Republican agenda is to further distinguish between the upper and middle class Americans. Who's creating class warfare? Certainly not Democrats. A Democrat did not implement the current tax rates.

Reagan also passed the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982 . This act funded training for unskilled adult workers to get them qualified to fill available jobs. The act was repealed by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 . There were significant cuts made in the 1998 version including removing provisions for displaced workers (unemployed) and veterans. I suggest Obama repeal the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and put something similar to the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982 back in place for a period of time to get Americans back to work quickly.

Reagan cut the budgets of non-military programs including Medicaid, food stamps, federal education programs and the EPA. He continued to protect Social Security and Medicare. Sound familiar? During the Republican Presidential debates, many of the candidates have been disseminating a similar message that they will keep Social Security but they want to cut the Department of Education, EPA and Medicare.

Reagan also created something called Project Socrates . This program was founded by physicist Michael Sekora. The purpose was to identify why the United States was not being competitive in the global marketplace. The program's objective was to change the way American companies do business in order to regain our top economic position in the world. Reagan was putting money into building a technological infrastructure to keep the United States ahead of the game. George H. W. Bush defunded the operation when he came into office. Technology is not in a Bush vocabulary. Obama should revisit this project for ideals on creating a new group to lead the next evolutionary change for America to regain competitiveness because we are WAY behind now. Thanks Bush(s).

There was a lot more going on during Reagan's time in office like the Cold War and the Iran-Contra Affair. However, Reagan was clearly doing something that Obama is not. Obama should dive much deeper into Reagan's policies to gain an understanding of what he should do next in today's economic climate that bears striking similarity to our economic climate in the 1980's. It doesn't appear to me that the Republican candidates know exactly what to do either. They are simply repeating "Reaganisms" at-will. Saying something and understanding something are two very different things. And being able to implement the thing that you say and understand is yet another.

If Reagan can rally back with a high approval rating after violating international law during the Iran-Contra Affair (guilty in a court of law for waging war on The Republic of Nicaragua), certainly Obama can do SOMETHING to fix the economy and bring up his approval rating to win this election!