[Darkwolf377]

What did president Reagan do that made him one of the greatest conservative icons in American history?

He defeated Jimmy Carter.

Personally, I did not agree with some of his moves but his cutbacks on the size of the federal government made sense to me.

When did he do that?

I loved the guy, but that was a huge failure on his part. I prefer to concentrate on his massive successes in terms of the economy and the commies.

[Borges]

Didn't he make a serious attempt to do so early on and held off after the GOP lost seats in 1982?

[Common Tator]

Personally, I did not agree with some of his moves but his cutbacks on the size of the federal government made sense to me.

Federal spending, federal taxes, and the federal debt doubled under Ronald Reagan. He cut nothing in government except to use Ronnies own words from the mondale debaet, "I have only cut the Rate of growth in government spending." What he did was cut the amount that Democrats wanted to spend. Of course democrats ask for twice what they wanted so Reagan could cut the request.. The Democrats still got what they wanted... doubleing the size of goverment in 8 short years.

Federal spending under Reagan increased at an average rate of 24.3 percent a year. The point here is that there is lot of lies posted about the Bush administration’s spending and “out of control” deficits, much of it by people who praise Reagan and trash Bush. But the most recent “out of control” Bush deficit at 2.6% of GDP is far below the eight-year Reagan average of 4.2%.