Reagan's Real "Legacy". Cheerleaders for Ronald Reagan's public Pollyanna view of "America" pretend that he put an end to Big Government, even tho the federal budget rose every single year of his Presidency and no federal department was abolished, even tho:

Ronald Reagan promised to close down two [Cabinet-level departments] (Energy and Education). Instead, he added one (Veterans Affairs). George Bush proposed adding another (Environment), but didn't get to do so. The Republican "revolutionaries" who took over Congress in 1994 pledged to abolish three departments (Energy, Education, Commerce), but quickly retreated.

So, he actually ADDED a Cabinet-level department and abolished none! His Vice President and anointed successor, George Bush the Elder, proposed adding another, and hugely increased the pervasiveness, invasiveness, and divisiveness promoted by the Federal Government in passing the Americans With Disabilities Act, which has given rise to hundreds of billions of dollars of lawsuits by people who cannot do the jobs they want, such as dyslexics who claim the right to work as proofreaders!
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Well, surely Reagan cut the budget, didn't he? No, he did not. As I say, in dollar terms — contemporary dollars and inflation-adjusted dollars — the federal budget rose every single year of his Presidency! Forbes Magazine tries to minimize the significance of this by claiming that as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Reagan's two terms reduced the budget a tiny bit:

In 1981, federal outlays were 22.2% of GDP, and that percentage continued to rise over the next two years, according to statistical tables published by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. But the numbers started falling after that, and by 1989, federal government outlays were 21.2% of GDP.

Wow! Eight years of Reagan reduced the federal budget as a proportion of the GDP by ONE whole percent! — even tho it rose in actual dollars every single year! Reagan didn't stop spending; he stopped paying! He just shifted current costs to future generations, by TRIPLING THE NATIONAL DEBT! That meant that every future budget had to include interest for the debt Reagan wracked up, which meant that future budgets had to (1) increase taxes, (2) decrease services or (3) take us deeper into debt just to pay the debt Reagan's spendthrift years produced. We are STILL paying Reagan's debt! And will be for the foreseeable future! He hid the increased burden on us by sleazy bookkeeping sleight-of-hand to make himself look good while enormously increasing the burden on future taxpayers — which means US, now.
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Reagan's true legacy is a huge national debt, life-crushing personal debt for scores of millions of Americans (see this blog's entry for Sunday, June 6th to see how he did that), and an enormous and growing gap between the rich and the rest of us.
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Shakespeare said it:
"The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones."
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:08 PM