The myth of Reagan conservatism
Sean Hannity is always espousing this mythical creature called a Reagan conservative. Has Mr. Hannity and the rest of the Republicans who place this president on a pedestal ever objectively examined his record. Did government increase or decrease from 1981 to 1988? Mr. Reagan’s words certainly sounded conservative but my question is, how conservative was Ronald Reagan is his actions?During Reagan’s 8 years in office the federal government spent a total of about 22% of GDP. (That’s the biggest-spending eight years since World War II.) Spending grew from $678 billion to $1.14 trillion. Pretty impressive conservative record. Let’s go on. Mr. Reagan, like his successors Bush, Clinton , Bush 2 and now Obama have absolutely no problem with large deficit spending.
If government cuts taxes, but not spending, it still gets the money from somewhere—either by borrowing or inflating. Either method robs the productive private sector.
During his tenure there was unprecedented government debt. Reagan had tripled the Gross Federal Debt, from $900 billion to $2.7 trillion. Ford and Carter in their combined terms could only double it. It took 31 years to accomplish the first postwar debt tripling, yet Reagan did it in eight.
Foreign aid has also risen, from $10 billion to $22 billion. Every year, Reagan asked for more foreign-aid money than the Congress was willing to spend. He also pushed through Congress an $8.4 billion increase in the U.S. “contribution” to the International Monetary Fund.
Mr Reagan increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts each year of his presidency.
He dramatically increased the War on Drugs costing the taxpayer billions of dollars and violating the rights of many US citizens.
He pledged to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy while campaigning, but after election it the budgets of these cabinets doubled. Reagan even promoted the creation of a new federal Department of Veterans’ Affairs to join the Departments of Education and Energy, which his administration was supposed to eliminate.
He damaged the free market by increasing trade barriers. The portion of imports under restriction has doubled since 1980. Quotas and so-called voluntary restraints have been imposed on a host of products, from computer chips to automobiles. He also promoted increasing spending on farm subsidies. Sound more and more conservative, huh?
He increased the federal workforce by 230,000.
This is just a small sampling of Ronald Reagan’s not-so-conservative record. It’s just a myth, and people like Hannity have elevated a general big government Republican into the God of the conservative movement.
Yes I know, these numbers appear microscopic after 8 years of Bush and now Obama, but at the time these numbers were huge. Especially for the leader of the conservative movement.
Please guys, lets be honest about the reality of the man.
The Desk of Brian recommends:
The foreign policy of Ronald Reagan-much more restrained than most
McCain concerned about “isolationist” Republicans, asks what would Reagan say?
Lessons of History on centrist politics - Thomas Sowell
Rick Santorum Doesn't Understand Reagan by Jack Hunter
Tea Party Should Emulate Clinton, Not Reagan
Sarah Palin to headline celebration of Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday
Sean Hannity on declarations of war
Sarah Palin’s “patriotic” speech at the Reagan dinner | video
All spending begins in the house. His party never controlled the House and the phrase “dead on arrival” was used every year when he sent up a budget. Reagan did sign TEFRA. Was promised two dollars of spending cuts forever dollar of taxes increased…….see second sentence above.
When he was campaigning in 1980 on deficit reduction and growth in defense to, as it turns out, weaken world communism, a reporter asked him which goal took priority. He said defense spending. Turns out democrats were listening.
Now if you wanted to mention he signed an abortion bill (partial legalization) as governor, it would be harder to mitigate. He did.
Reagan taught the Republicans that (to quote Dick Cheney) “deficits don’t matter” – and he also got into bed with the religious crazies who want to use The State to enforce their religious beliefs on everyone else.
@IMJ
Defense spending is actually a function that the central government is supposed to perform.
Great. So as long as we call it “defense spending” I guess anything goes! Besides, the whole world turns in to the Somali coast without our fleet of aircraft carriers.
@Sargon
If you actually look deeply at what destroyed the USSR it was oil prices cratering. Defense spending is actually a function that the central government is supposed to perform. Defending our borders against incursions by invading hordes of lowriders and yard blower operators, exploding arabs, that kind of stuff.
Same as I feel about Reagan. Different sides of the same coin.
If you feel that Reagans budgets broke us. How do you feel about the Trillion dollar deficits coming from our current Congress/President? I can recall the holy s**t storm the media had going when the National Debt hit 1 Trillion.
At what price? Massive debt?
You aren’t giving any credit to other factors that helped pull the Soviet Union apart and you aren’t acknowledging the sacrifices of social issues & spending to defeat the communists.
Conservatism doesn’t have to mean Interventionism
Why didn’t Reagan just let free markets take care of the USSR? Why did he need all that big government defense spending to get the job done?
“Reagan was good president who gets called great because the relative pool was so pathetic.”
Reagan gets called great because he understood the #1 challenge of his time, and rose to meet it: the cold war. The US was “winning” the cold war for years, but Reagan put the hammer down, and put an end to it, by investing in star wars (whether it was a realistic possibility or not) and a heavy defense buildup and at the same time, building a personal rapport with Gorbachev that supported the Berlin wall coming down.
Everything else was a side dish.
“But, conservatives use Reagan to say that they are for smaller government when his actions betray such notions.”
I agree. Most people who call themselves conservatives today, think Reagan shrank the US government.
Where does this come from? I’m more and more perplexed that complete fabrications and falsehoods can be so broadly believed. Especially when it is easy to disprove!
The article claimed that Reagan was not a conservative, not that he was not a libertarian. That was my point about names. I agree he was not a libertarian, he was for massive government control of behavior and thought. Those happen to be long time popular conservative values.
When Reagan was president I despised as I held blind hatred as a registered Democrat.
I’ve moved more conservative as I aged and now hold the following conclusions:
To the Conservatives and blind Republicans: Reagan is extremely overrated. He was good, but is glorified because Carter was a joke and speeches were awesome.
His leadership looks great compared to Nixon, Ford, or Carter. Reagan was good president who gets called great because the relative pool was so pathetic.
Reagan doesn’t deserve to be demonized by the left but also doesn’t deserve to be glorified by the right.
As you can see from this chart:
http://i.imgur.com/itpzA.png
Reagan had the highest outlays as % of GDP of any president since Roosevelt! So, yes, taxes went down during his presidency, but spending went up, meaning he generated more debt. This does not particularly weaken the U.S. government; if anything, it’s given them an excuse to keep raising taxes.
You’re going to have to rework your definition of “conservative.” He didn’t “conserve” anything besides the bullshit legacy of U.S. politicians.
Jones does a pretty good job at it: During Reagan’s 8 years in office the federal government spent a total of about 22% of gdp
I think you are confusing that taxes went up with revenue went up, but I could be wrong. You can think of it this way. You are in debt, a lot of debt. The people in charge of your mortgage call you and say “hey you don’t need to pay for this, if your kids will with a bunch of interest”
If you take that deal it is going to be a big boost to you, but it is a hindrance on the kids. Now if you are able to make enough money to pass a bunch on to the kids it might not be for naught, but it might be. It is hard to say without living through both situations.
So what does that say about the situation before and after him?
The usual story is that under Carter, there were crippling tax rates, the economy wasn’t going anywhere. He came in and slashed taxes to a reasonable rate, and things got going again.
You’re now saying that taxes remained the same. I’ve even heard some claim that taxes went up. How does that jive with the performance of the economy before and after? Wouldn’t things just get worse and worse?
Or to put it another way: how high can taxes go? If they were so high before, and he didn’t cut them, and then Bush I and Clinton raised them further, how much more can we possibly raise taxes?
I know I’m speaking in awfully vague terms, but something just doesn’t seem right to me about this claim.
The tax cuts had at most a marginal effect on the US economy. By and large, the Volcker recession provided the real “stimulus” that rejuvenated the US economy and shook off years of poor Keynesian monetary policy that created the crippling stagflation of the 1970′s. The tax changes just served to move the tax burden toward the middle and lower class for Social Security.
He really did not cut taxes. He just changed some direct taxes by indirect taxes.
It would have been hard for me to hate regan. I know he was a new world order pupet but when a man cuts my taxes its hard not like him.
“If you don’t like what he did, call yourself something else.”
Well, for one, this is /r/Libertarian, not /r/Conservative. So that’s that.
But, conservatives use Reagan to say that they are for smaller government when his actions betray such notions. Some people (the entire political establishment of the US as well as the useful idiots voting for them) base their judgments solely on style over substance. This article is an example of how that happens.
There haven’t been many small government conservatives in recent history. The only one that comes to mind is Barry Goldwater, but even he was somewhat of a hawk. Ron Paul and Gary Johnson are more libertarian than they are conservative.
Reagan set out to destroy the U.S. government. He did this by cutting taxes and increasing spending. Bankrupting the country was the goal, not an unfortunate result. The hope was that faced with bankruptcy we would get rid of all social programs.
And, sorry, but Reagan was a conservative. If you don’t like what he did, call yourself something else. But give up this childish reaction of pushing for more and more conservative politicians, then complaining about the results of conservative policies.
Same as I feel about Reagan. Different sides of the same coin.
If you feel that Reagans budgets broke us. How do you feel about the Trillion dollar deficits coming from our current Congress/President? I can recall the holy shit storm the media had going when the National Debt hit 1 Trillion.
“Are you referring to the budgets that broke the Soviets and won the Cold War”
If you buy into that… For me, the Cold War was as pointless as the Iraq war is. Just 2 nations saying “my guns are bigger than yours” with no real threat. One could even say the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the real “breaker” and Reagan’s mettling in that war is part of the reason Afghanis dislike us now.
Not only did it “break” the Soviets, it broke our budget even more than it had been.
“Are you referring to the budgets that broke the Soviets and won the Cold War?”
No, because Reagan didn’t do that. The Soviets fell because their system was inefficient and they could not long maintain their occupation. Unlike conservatives in America, I actually believe in the value of the market and of democracy so I knew we had the better system and would win. There is utterly no evidence for the myth that any Reagan did caused the Soviets to increase military spending. Excepting, of course, the Afghan war and that was due to the efforts of Democratic congressman, the Reagan people actually thought they would break the Soviets in Central America.
“When I joined the Navy in 84 they were still trying to recover from the mongolian clusterfuck that had been the Carter administration.”
Such as what? (Hint: Carter increased military spending.)
Are you referring to the budgets that broke the Soviets and won the Cold War? Because I am fine with that. When I joined the Navy in 84 they were still trying to recover from the mongolian clusterfuck that had been the Carter administration.
How many budgets did Reagan submit that decreased military spending or decreased the prison-industrial complex?
I never said Reagan or TEFRA did not raise taxes. I pointed out that the duplicitous congress lied about spending cuts and passed a bloated budget over Regans veto. How many budgets that Reagan submitted were declared DOA by Ways and Means committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski (who later became inmate Rostenkowski) because they would “Throw poor people on the street”?
You still did a poor job proving that Reagan didn’t raise taxes.
“The original TEFRA bill as passed by the House lowered taxes. The Republican-controlled Senate replaced the text of the original House bill with a number of tax increases, and the bill became law after President Ronald Reagan signed it.”
H.R. 6863 was not TEFRA. It was the spending bill passed over Reagans veto.
@IMJGalt: This spending bill did not, however. You didn’t even read the full article you cited. Sad, sad, sad.
“We therefore conclude that the Senate did not exceed its authority under the origination clause when it proposed the extensive amendments that ultimately became TEFRA.”
Explosion of prison populations due to Reagan? Check!
If we’re gunna spend money on social services, we may as well provide health care, room and board for criminals instead of the poor, right?
Did you guys attend third grade civics? I seem to recall that all spending originates in the House of Representatives.