Will one of JFK's biggest accomplishments,even get mentioned in the coming memorials?

[Little-Acorn]

Kennedy's most significant events are (a) the showdown with Kruschev over short-range nuclear missiles, and (b) the tax cuts he shepherded through Congress (signed by LBJ after Kennedy's assassination).

No doubt the Cuban Missile Crisis will get a lot of attention in the coming memorials.

But Kennedy also put in place across-the-board tax cuts. When he first took office, the highest income tax rates were 92%. He lowered them to "only" 75%, while lowering all the rates on lower incomes proportionately.

He gave a speech in New York, describing why he felt such tax cuts were necessary. Will any of the following quotes even get any mention in the coming memorials?

American Rhetoric: John F. Kennedy - Address to the Economic Club of New York

“...any new tax legislation enacted next year should meet the following three tests:

“First, it should reduce the net taxes by a sufficiently early date and a sufficiently large amount to do the job required.... Second, the new tax bill must increase private consumption, as well as investment.... Third, the new tax bill should improve both the equity and the simplicity of our present tax system.

“For all these reasons, next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes: for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital.

“The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system — and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes...”

“...an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget — just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.

“...our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a budgetary surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy, or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve, I believe — and I believe this can be done — a budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness; the second reflects an investment in the future.”

My guess is, tax cuts might get mentioned in passing, followed by a quick change in subject, if they are mentionend at all.

The reasons for the cuts, which he explained in the above speech, will be carefully omitted. Though they are as true today as they were then, they don't jive with the present administration's beliefs of the way tax cuts work.

(This tells you as much about the present administration, as it does about the effects of tax cuts)

 

[tyroneweaver]

I hear he slept with Jayne Mansfield