A Final Report Card on the Reagan Years?

By Sam Pizzigati

Created 01/05/2009 - 8:59am

Our current economic meltdown may finally have ended the era that began when Ronald Reagan became President. Now a new study — from the Congressional Budget Office — helps us understand the inequality that has us melting.

Two days before Christmas, with hardly anyone at all paying much attention, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office delivered up a final report card on the Reagan era. The highest grades? They went, almost exclusively, to the super rich.

You won't, to be sure, find any As, Bs, and Fs in this new Congressional Budget Office report card [1]. And the CBO's researchers certainly didn't set out to grade America on the years since Ronald Reagan became President a generation ago. But they've done just that. On taxes and income distribution, their new report makes vividly clear, the United States desperately "needs improvement."