press belatedly started examining some of the claims from the campaign that had gotten him there. On Issues and Answers on March 16, host John Laurence noted his commercial claiming that John F. Kennedy “helped almost everybody in the country” with a 30 percent tax cut. Laurence pointed out that the 1960s cut had only averaged 19 percent, was not uniform across the board but progressive, and had not closed the budget deficit as claimed. Reagan replied, “I don’t remember saying that, because I honestly don’t know what the rate of tax cut was.” Laurence asked if he read his scripts before
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