“There is no credibility left for the Republican Party as a force to reduce the size of government. That is the message of the Reagan years.”
Ron Paul 1987
Politicians have a tendency to change history to suit their purposes. The revising of history by Soviet dictators was legendary. Our own leaders have been on occasion guilty of distorting, reconfiguring, or downright lying about past events. Most notable are the claims that Abraham Lincoln launched the Civil War to end slavery and that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal ended the Great Depression.
One of the greatest revisionist histories perpetuated in the latter part of the 20th Century by both Republicans and Democrats alike is that Ronald Reagan was a conservative, limited government president. Republicans praise him for his “record” of getting the government off our backs and dramatically reducing the size of the federal leviathan. Democrats vilify him for weakening programs that helped the underclass and reducing the scope of government needed to ensure economic prosperity. Both Republicans and Democrats couldn’t be farther from the truth in their thinking.
In the first place, government got exponentially larger during Reagan’s eight years as president. For instance, during the 1980 race for the White House, Reagan made a cornerstone of his campaign the elimination of federal agencies and departments. In particular he proposed abolishing the Departments of Education and Energy. Instead of eliminating those wasteful departments, by the end of his term Reagan had doubled their budgets and created another department – the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. In 8 years as president, the former B Actor hired 230,000 more bureaucrats. How is that the work of a small government president?
Reagan is also portrayed as a tax reducer by both sides. Up to that point in our history, he was one of the biggest tax increasers of all time. He increased taxes and fees on everything from gasoline to trucking to Social Security. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was the largest tax increase in American history to that point. It rolled back many business tax cuts enacted during his first year in office. The remarkable thing is that given his reputation for being a dedicated tax cutter by the time he left office in January 1989 tax revenues were still 24.7 percent of national income – only slightly down from 25.1 percent when he took office in 1981. The facts bare proof that Reagan was no tax cutter.
“Thanks to the President (Reagan) and Republican Party, we have lost the chance to reduce the deficit and the spending in a non-crisis fashion.”
Ron Paul 1987
Lastly, analysis of Reagan’s conservative credentials would be grossly incomplete without a review of federal spending during his administration. One could conclude by looking at Reagan’s spending alone that he was not a free market dyed in the wool capitalist but a big state liberal. In eight years as president the Gipper never proposed a budget smaller than the year’s before. Federal farm program spending went from $21.4 billion in 1981 to $51.4 billion in 1987, a 140 percent increase. Entitlements, which cost $197.1 billion in 1981, cost $477 billion in 1987, another 140 percent increase. Even foreign aid, long a target of conservatives’ wrath, was doubled under Reagan. As everyone knows by now, the welfare state was not inaccessible to the military industrial complex either. Reagan increased military spending enormously during his presidency. At the end of his spending binge he managed to triple the federal debt to $2.7 trillion by 1989 and paved the way for future administrations to spend like drunken sailors.
While most conservatives celebrate Reagan for his “small government” credentials and most liberals slander him for dismantling the federal government, remember that actions speak louder than words. Reagan spoke a good game about eliminating government but rarely produced those results. After 8 years of his presidency, the federal government was much larger and more intrusive in our lives. Thus revisionist history is alive and well at least when it comes to the Great Communicator’s presidency. So the next time you hear Perry Romney, or some of the other unprincipled Republican candidate for president praise the Gipper and claim they are his heir apparent, remember Reagan’s real record and consider if we can afford another president like him.
Article first published as Revisionism is Alive and Well on Blogcritics.
Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina
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Comments
This is where I part company with Ron Paul, national security, because I don't think the world works like he does in that regard, although our own national security state is rather dangerous too; they all are; that's the problem, alas, the Security Dilemma.
I would like to see a truly strong defense of America where our troops are only called upon to defend America and not partake in endless wars like Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya. In the first place we can't afford it and in the second place it builds up a lot of resentments that otherwise wouldn't exist.
BTW - i believed for a long time that Reagan's military spending eventually bankrupted the Soviet Union. But you know what, socialism bankrupted the USSR. The timing of Reagan's buildup just coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A perfect, “I didn’t know that!” moment for me.
Thankee muchly.....
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Isn't America already a nation socialist country where the politically connected get bailed, the president decides which industries are worthy of federal largess, people's emails and phone conversations are snooped on without warrents, people are treated like common criminals at the airport, the government pursues a strategy of deficit spending and endless wars, the schools and media pick and choose who the front runners are in political campaigns, and the president decides he can assassinate Americans if he suspects them of terrorism. Check Nazi Germany, it seems pretty similar to me.
Libertarianism is not a religion, it is one of many political ideologies. Given how screwed up the world has become with our current crop of leaders, I find it insane to vote for the same thing again in 2012.
Isn't America already a nation socialist country where the politically connected get bailed, the president decides which industries are worthy of federal largess, people's emails and phone conversations are snooped on without warrents, people are treated like common criminals at the airport, the government pursues a strategy of deficit spending and endless wars, the schools and media pick and choose who the front runners are in political campaigns, and the president decides he can assassinate Americans if he suspects them of terrorism. Check Nazi Germany, it seems pretty similar to me.
Libertarianism is not a religion, it is one of many political ideologies. Given how screwed up the world has become with our current crop of leaders, I find it insane to vote for the same thing again in 2012.
Isn't America already a nation socialist country where the politically connected get bailed, the president decides which industries are worthy of federal largess, people's emails and phone conversations are snooped on without warrents, people are treated like common criminals at the airport, the government pursues a strategy of deficit spending and endless wars, the schools and media pick and choose who the front runners are in political campaigns, and the president decides he can assassinate Americans if he suspects them of terrorism. Check Nazi Germany, it seems pretty similar to me.
Libertarianism is not a religion, it is one of many political ideologies. Given how screwed up the world has become with our current crop of leaders, I find it insane to vote for the same thing again in 2012.
Your response to Ben indicates that you are mixing apples and oranges and coming up socialism. This is a classic propaganda technique used by many countries including the USA. I’d bet it is just as prevalent in China and Cuba as it is in the US and England.
It is not so often used in such a raw form for consumption by the population any more (it was used a lot during the 40s, 50s and 60s) but it is exactly the kind and form often used on the members of the military and police and mercenary organizations. The public may not be so easy to convince with such crude means anymore, it having been fooled by it often enough already, and grown wiser.
Military type organizations are populated by people who have a NEED to demonize anyone with a “different” attitude or idea. Their members suck up such childish labels in order to adopt the kill, kill, kill or lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key, attitudes that make their job seem important to “all things good”. It allows them to label themselves as part of “the good” too; an important psychological attitude to them.
You lump together all the bad or unpleasant things that a government can do, then attach a label such as “socialism” to that mess of pottage. I can, as an example, agree with your list of some (there are many you didn’t mention) of the evils going on in America right now. Yet I see them happening under a highly capitalist system and government. You may disagree.
I think you would agree, however, that such things have gone on in socialist systems as well. I differ in that I do not label these things as “capitalist” or “socialist”. They have no home in that sense and appear in many different forms of government and social organizations.
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I met a Ron Paul supporter recently after a rally who said it was clear that abolishing the Federal Reserve was necessary. When I asked what he and the libertarians would do to replace it he was stumped.
Basicially, I think you are reactionaries hiding behind an agenda that goes in the wrong direction, and when you say you don't participate in the political system as it exists until you get your way that proves it.
As to libertarians not having a plan after abolishing the Fed you can go to Mises.org, Lew Rockwell.com, even the Cato Institute to start a search on a truly free monetary system if the Fed ever gets abolished. Ron Paul has introduced legislation in Congress to provide for a competing currencies system. Just because you talk to one clueless libertarian you shouldn't label all of us the same. I believe you liberals would call that "prejudice".
That's what I call a gross assumption. There are an awful lot of stops in between. In other words: You think the Nazi's were correct in their theory if not their means?
This is what makes you guys so damn scary. You may be trying to fix up your act via Ron Paul but there are more than a few loopholes in your system, and I strongly suspect an attempt to cover up a right wing movement masquerading as a theory of govt.
And I think I'm not alone. Paul ain't gathering traction as a candidate.
I'll see what you produce in the future. Maybe you're more advanced polemically than the dumbells who want to destroy federalism, but I'll stay a liberal, thank you even if I wasn't "conveted" to it, but adapted it as fairer to the greatest number rather than the few and the anal.