Skeptics predicted the president’s tax policies would bring hardship on the states. A Chicago Tribune headline, in contrast to Ronald Reagan’s positive, polite rhetoric, read: “Willing or not, states are partners in Reagan tax gamble.”
Meanwhile, liberals in Congress waited like children on Christmas Eve, believing the president’s tax cuts meant sure victory in the next election.
So convinced was Senator Thomas Eagleton that the Post quoted him saying, “This bill keeps the Democratic Party alive. It is so inherently inequitable, so inherently unfair that it will stand as a bedrock for the rebirth of the Democratic Party.”
President Reagan was able to convince congressional Republicans to stand with him.
All, except one: Vermont’s Jim Jeffords.
When the dust settled, the president persuaded nearly 50 congressional Democrats to vote for his plan as it passed the House, 238-195, and the sailed through the Senate, 89-11. Mostly from the South and the West, they became known as Reagan Democrats for often siding with the president on economic issues.
As Newsweek recounted how House Speaker Tip O’Neill likened the tax battle as but an inning in a baseball game of nine that would end with the 1982 election, U.S. News & World Report quoted a senator from Indiana, Dan Quayle, who predicted that Reagan’s historic tax cuts marked a second American Revolution.
Both then observed as it launched the longest economic boom in American history.