LBJ Kicked Off The Great Society With Calls For Tax Cuts and Reduced Spending
I think it's fair to say that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration marked a high water mark of American liberalism on the domestic economic front. We got Medicare, Medicaid, and the War on Poverty out of his time in office alongside the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act. Yet I think most people would be interested to read his 1964 State of the Union Address and find that he engaged in all the rhetorical and tactical tics that liberals hate about Barack Obama:
For my part, I pledge a progressive administration which is efficient, and honest and frugal. The budget to be submitted to the Congress shortly is in full accord with this pledge.
It will cut our deficit in half--from $10 billion to $4,900 million. It will be, in proportion to our national output, the smallest budget since 1951.
It will call for a substantial reduction in Federal employment, a feat accomplished only once before in the last 10 years. While maintaining the full strength of our combat defenses, it will call for the lowest number of civilian personnel in the Department of Defense since 1950.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/21/lbj_kicked_off_the_great_society_with_calls_for_tax_cuts_and_reduced_spending.htm
It goes to show that the narrative we sometimes create about people like LBJ or FDR isn't so cut and dry.
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who was holding up JFK's tax cut bill in committee.
This does not mean he approved of the budget cuts. He did not. But he could not get the bill out of committee without them. Try reading Caro's "Passage of Power" for the whole story -- see the chapters "Old Henry" and "Old Henry 2" for the story of Harry Flood Byrd ("of the Virginia Byrds"
and how LBJ finally forced him to let the bill out of committee (after basically capitulating to his demands).
