The White House sent out a series of news reports Wednesday showing companies boosting pay, giving bonuses, and creating new jobs.

Starbuck’s, Disney, Verizon — all but one of the success stories was attributed to the tax cuts President Trump signed into law before the end of 2017 (Whirlpool was purportedly responding to his tariff hike instead).

Republicans believe it is important to their midterm election prospects, to say nothing of Trump’s re-election, to tout the tax cuts. They need to show how it increased take-home pay, accelerated economic growth, and helped businesses create new jobs.

Polling before the tax reform package’s passage suggested the public was skeptical they would pay less, and many feared they would pay more. While those numbers have improved since the tax cut was enacted, the perception still exists that the legislation was weighted too heavily in favor of corporations.

Whether the public sees the tax cuts as a success or not has longer term implications for the GOP than 2018 or even Trump’s presumed bid for a second term. The past two decades have not been kind to the Republicans’ image as the party of growth and the tax issue has lost at least some of its force with the electorate.

After President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, stagflation was whipped, the economy grew by a third, exports doubled, the rate of manufacturing productivity growth tripled, the unemployment rate was cut in half, and 20 million net new jobs were created. Even the dreaded deficit, which spiked to 6.3 of GDP in 1983, was back down to 2.9 percent by the time Reagan left office.

In 1986, Reagan signed tax reform legislation that came as close to a flat tax as we have seen at the federal level in the post-New Deal era. The number of tax brackets was reduced from 14 to just two and the top marginal rate was cut down to 28 percent. It had been 70 percent when Reagan took office in 1981.

Matched with the economic booms that followed tax cuts in the 1920s and 1960s, the latter by a Democratic president, and contrasted with the recession that followed President George H.W. Bush breaking his “no new taxes” pledge, the case for this as pro-growth policy seemed solid.

Then President Bill Clinton signed into law a tax increase, raising the top marginal rate by one-third in 1993. Republicans predicted the move would plunge the economy back into recession. It did help create the first GOP House majority in 40 years. But the 1990s are remembered as a prosperous time.

Yes, some of the most robust growth came after tax cuts, not tax hikes. In 1997, Clinton signed a Republican-passed bill that included a $500-per-child tax credit and lowered the top capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 20 percent.

Still, the sky did not fall after the imposition of a nearly 40 percent top tax rate as some Republicans predicted. And the theory that the Clinton tax increase actually stimulated the economy by lowering interest rates through deficit reduction gained a superficial plausibility.

Then came the administration of George W. Bush, who unlike his father cut taxes twice — and promptly presided over two recessions. The second one was severe, with unemployment peaking at 10 percent and the U.S. economy shrinking by nearly 4 percent between the second quarter of 2008 and the same point in 2009.

One could argue that all this really proves is (a) taxes are important but they aren’t everything and (b) a 39.6 percent tax rate isn’t sufficient to smother an Internet boom and a 35 percent tax rate isn’t enough to stave off a financial meltdown. But the relationship between taxes and growth for the casual political observer was broken.

Tax-cutting was also a victim of its own success. With millions dropped off the tax rolls and middle-class taxes no longer being raised through inflation-induced bracket creep, the debate shifted to modest changes in the top tax rate.

High deficits made it more difficult for Republicans to offer broad-based tax relief, at least through the internal revenue code. The top tax rate was well below the Laffer Curve’s prohibitive rate, meaning additional revenue losses and cuts that skewed to the wealthy.

The Trump tax cuts could change the conventional wisdom again, even though the most significant changes were to corporate taxation, a fact Democrats are unlikely to let the president’s working-class supporters forget.

Trump and the Republicans are trying very hard to sell the tax cuts. If they fail, Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ preferred tax rates could wind up with a bigger constituency.