The Democrats have changed a lot since 1986

More than 30 Senate Democrats voted for President Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 — including one still in office today — and conservatives say Democrats today have no reason to vote against a similar tax reform package now before Congress. 

“If I hear any more Democrats talking about ‘the bottom rate is going up,’ I’ll remind them they might want to contact [Joe Biden, Al Gore, and John Kerry], because they voted with President [Ronald] Reagan to lower that 11 percent rate to zero, just as we are lowering the 10 percent rate to zero as well,” Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said at a recent event at The Heritage Foundation. 

 

Only three Democratic senators voted against the Republican tax reform plan when it passed the Senate on Jun 24, 1986, and only 12 Democrats voted against the final conference report when it passed the Senate on Sept. 27, 1986, before the legislation was signed into law by Reagan on Oct. 22, 1986. 

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who has represented Vermont in the Senate since 1975, also voted for Reagan’s tax-reform package, as did then-Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who retired from the Senate in 2014.