What Trump can learn from Reagan on Presidents Day

It’s all well and good that President Donald Trump has been signing those executive orders in the White House.

It’s great that the stock market has gone up at record rates since he was elected. For that, many are thankful—from the bottom of their IRAs.

But all the executive orders in the world are not going to give Americans what they really need: tax reform, healthcare reform, and immigration reform.

{mosads}To do all of the above, and more, and to repair the damage Barack Obama did to America at home and abroad during his eight years, Trump is going to have to work with Congress to pass the important laws we need.

President Trump and all the Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives have to find a way to work together with Democrats.

To get all these things done—to make America great again—President Trump needs to take a lesson from my father, Ronald Reagan.

Reagan shocked the country, the liberal media, and the Washington establishment when he was elected president in 1980.

He was a staunch conservative who wasn’t afraid to say he planned to cut people’s taxes, bring changes to the federal government, and defeat the Soviets.

Despite the liberal critics, naysaying pundits, and the pessimists in Reagan’s own party, he quickly found a way to work with a Democratic House of Representatives.

On Aug. 13, 1981, at his ranch in Santa Barbara, my father signed the largest tax break in U.S. history and jump-started the stagnant American economy.

The Economic Recovery Tax Act has been derided by liberals as the cause of higher federal deficits, which were actually caused by runaway government spending, but in 2004 the Tax Foundation deemed it “a watershed event in the history of federal taxation.”

The bill’s centerpiece was an across-the-board 25 percent cut in the marginal rates of individuals.

But the Tax Foundation noted it also included “a number of lesser-known reforms that have had a dramatic and lasting impact on the Internal Revenue Code—indexation of tax rates to end ‘bracket creep,’ improved tax treatment of depreciation and lease payments, reformed tax treatment of overseas income, and more.”

Miraculously, the Economic Recovery Tax Act passed a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. A House being run by Tip O’Neill, for Pete’s sake.

President Trump and the Republicans in charge of both the House and Senate should be able to come up with a tax reform bill that Trump can sign before August.

Trump and Republicans in Washington also need to do what President Obama failed to do for eight years, even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress—pass immigration reform.

And that doesn’t just mean building the “Great Trump Wall” and strengthening our Southern border.

Trump needs to pass real immigration reform, which means doing things like simplifying and speeding up the cumbersome legal immigration process and adding an old-style bracero-type program so Latino workers can come and leave America by walking through a gate, not wading across a river.

If President Trump lowers taxes and passes immigration reform, he won’t have to do anything else except make America safe for the next four years to get reelected.

My father set out to accomplish three things as president: lower taxes to boost the economy, win the Cold War without blowing up the world, and close down the Department of Education.

He did two of those three things while keeping America safe and he’s considered one of the greatest presidents this country ever had.

That’s proof it’s not about how much a president does, it’s what he does. And what the president does, he must do right.

So on this Presidents Day, President Trump should start working with the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Instead of showing members of Congress executive offices in the White House, Trump might go down and visit their offices.

If Trump doesn’t start working with Congress to pass important reform legislation soon, there’s a good chance that instead of railing about the “fake news,” others will be railing about a fake government.

Michael Reagan, author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan,” is president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. He is the son of former President Ronald Reagan and Academy Award-winning actress Jane Wyman. Follow him on Twitter @ReaganWorld.

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