Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) lamented Wednesday in an interview on “Fox & Friends” that America doesn’t have any moderate “Jack Kennedy Democrats anymore” who would support tax cuts and reforms for middle-class Americans.

The Senate late Tuesday approved historic tax reform legislation, then sent the bill back to the House for a final vote on minor technical details. Ryan was surprised and disappointed that no Senate Democrat supported the bill. President John F. Kennedy won passage of tax cuts in 1962 that fueled the country’s economic expansion throughout the rest of the decade.

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“Jack Kennedy was saying rising tide lifts all boats, cut taxes rates across the board, it’s going to help the economy. You do not have Democrats saying that anymore,” Ryan noted. “So the progressive Left had basically gripped their party.”

Ryan told the Fox News co-hosts he thought that “at the end of the day,” vulnerable Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and others from red states that President Donald Trump carried in the 2016 presidential election would come around to support tax reform.

“They’re all stuck with the progressive hard Left against tax relief and tax reform. So I do think this is not in their interests — not only just politically but economically speaking,” Ryan said. “I think they’re going to regret not having supported it — at least some of them.”

Ryan and other congressional Republicans also accused the Democratic Party and the mainstream media of misleading the American public by claiming the tax bill’s benefits were mainly for the affluent, while giving little relief to middle-class Americans.

When Ryan spoke on NBC News’ “Today Show” on Wednesday, co-host Savannah Guthrie pointed to a quote from businessman Michael Bloomberg, who also served three terms as New York City’s mayor.

“CEOs aren’t waiting on a tax cut to ‘jump-start the economy’ — a favorite phrase of politicians who have never run a company — or to hand out raises,” Bloomberg wrote in The Salt Lake Tribune this week. “It’s pure fantasy to think that the tax bill will lead to significantly higher wages and growth, as Republicans have promised.”

“Are you living in a fantasy world?” Guthrie asked Ryan.

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“I would compare that anecdote to just the surveys of businesses like the National Association of Manufacturers surveys, which show the vast majority of businesses are going to do just what we say — reinvest in their workers, reinvest in their factories, pay people more money, higher wages,” Ryan replied before Guthrie continued to grill him.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also lamented Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” that tax cuts and reform used to be bipartisan issues.

Related: Pelosi Off Deep End, Decries ‘Holy Season’ Tax Cuts as ‘Moral Obscenity’

“I think Senate Democrats, they have gone so extreme and so far to the Left that they’re listening to their radical left-wing base,” Cruz said. “They’re listening to their base that hates President Trump with a white-hot passion. And the Left base is demanding resist, oppose, filibuster, obstruct. And every Senate Democrat is doing that.”

President Trump used Twitter on Wednesday to praise the Senate’s 51-48 vote in passing the tax reform package, while bashing the “defeated Dems” and “Fake News” media.

“The tax cuts are so large and so meaningful, and yet the Fake News is working overtime to follow the lead of their friends, the defeated Dems, and only demean,” Trump tweeted. “This is truly a case where the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!”

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PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter here.