FDR *greatly* increased taxes, and he was perfectly right in doing so. For the first time we saw the expansion of federal government in a way that it considered itself responsible to provide a basic safety net for its citizens. It was something that sustained us through the Depression years.
Taxes are not always bad, and they are not always good either. FDR took a radical, out-of-the-box approach, and it worked.
But there's also a solid reason to give tax breaks to corporations. In a more open market, with less federal regulations, companies have more room to grow, and to spur the economy to grow as a whole. AFAIK, economists generally do agree, or at least see value in cutting taxes in the way Bush did in terms of helping the macro-level economy.
Does it peeve people who say, "Look, these guys make way more than me and don't have to pay a higher enough percentage of taxes?" Yes. But making them pay the same taxes as the rest of us out of some sense of fiscal equality doesn't make things better for the economy. The wealthy are in a position to invest and drive the economy that the middle-class is not in. And as the economy as a whole improves, the effects trickle down class lines, so the theory goes.
We've had numerous failures in foreign policy under Bush. So numerous it's ridiculous. But while we have also gone through tough economic times, the tax cut plan being implemented does not deserve the hate it's getting. At the very least, the general idea of "cutting taxes" has a lot of merit.
By the way, I saw a bit of an excerpt from Clinton's 1996 campaign once on CSPAN. It was a televised debate, I believe, and this is what he said (paraphrased): 'we're going to fix education, and we're going to do it by lowering taxes.'
