Fifty years after the assassination, the author of the new book , JFK, Conservative explains how John Kennedy paved the way for Ronald Reagan.
He cut taxes.
The Kennedy tax cuts, passed by the House in September 1963 and by the Senate after Kennedy’s death, cut the top individual income tax rate to 70 percent from 91 percent (Kennedy had wanted the income tax rate lowered to 65 percent and the long-term capital gains rate cut to 19.5 percent from 25).
Via Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston
He told a liberal Harvard economics professor to "shut up" when he opposed Kennedy's tax cuts.
He told John Kenneth Galbraith to shut up. John Kenneth Galbraith, the 6-foot, eight-inch tall liberal Keynesian Harvard economics professor, opposed the Kennedy tax cuts, preferring increased government spending instead. As Galbraith described it, Kennedy finally lost patience: “The president told me to shut up about my opposition to tax cuts.”
Via Evening Standard / Getty Images
He said Al Gore's dad was a "son of a bitch."
Al Gore Sr., the father of Bill Clinton’s vice president, was a Democratic Senator from Tennessee who opposed the Kennedy tax cuts as a bonanza for “fat cats.” Kennedy described Gore as a “son of a bitch.”
He favored free trade.
Kennedy’s highest priority with Congress in 1962 was trade negotiation authority, which gave him power to negotiate tariff reductions. Opposing taxes on goods imported from overseas, he sounded like a member of the Tea Party: “When the people of Boston in 1773 threw cargoes of tea into the harbor, the American Revolution was in effect underway.”
Via Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston
