…credit card and car-loan interest payments were, like houses, tax-deductible?
From Wikianswers:
On Oct. 22, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Reagan called the 829-page, 33-pound bill “the most sweeping overhaul of the tax code in our nation’s history.”
The new code gradually phased out all deductions for interest paid on car loans, charge-account purchases, vacations and anything else that fell under what the law termed “consumer loans.”
This is a pretty obvious yardstick for assessing President Obama and his (and his party’s) efforts to rescue and ram through the overclass’s pet Chicago-school/supply-side theory of how to fix a Depression.