Posted on 02/08/2011 4:54:27 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Everybody loves former President Reagan. That's clear from the celebration surrounding our 40th president's 100th birthday, complete with a JumboTron Superbowl tribute and a USA Today op-ed from President Obama praising Reagan's "unique ability to inspire others to greatness." Last week in this space, I took aim at one faction's attempt to claim the Reagan legacy, in a column entitled "Reagan was no neocon," I argued that, despite their retrospective affection for Reagan, neoconservatives in the 1980s were bitterly disappointed by his foreign policy. But turnabout is fair play, so I should acknowledge that you could pull the same trick on libertarians like myself. By the end of Reagan's tenure, many of my ideological brethren considered "Reaganite" an epithet.
"Eight dreary, miserable years" of "egregiously statist policies," Murray Rothbard snarled in Liberty magazine in 1989. My colleague David Boaz was less dyspeptic, but nearly as disappointed, in his introduction to the 1988 Cato Institute volume "Assessing the Reagan Years": "The Reagan Revolution turned out to be a paper tiger," he wrote.
True enough: Reagan was no libertarian. Instead of wrapping ourselves in his mantle, those of us who support deep reductions in government's size and power should take a clear-eyed look at the Reagan record.
The Cato Institute did just that in "Assessing the Reagan Years," which showed that under Reagan, federal spending actually increased from 23 percent to 24 percent of gross national product, while payroll tax increases resulted in a net tax increase for most Americans.
Not only did Reagan renege on his promise to abolish President Carter's new Cabinet departments, Education and Energy, he appointed secretaries dedicated to their preservation.
Carter did more than Reagan to deregulate the economy, the authors explained, and while farm subsidies tripled under Reagan's watch, Reagan eliminated only one (one!) major federal program, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (which was almost immediately reborn under another name).
"On so many issues," Boaz lamented, the Reagan administration "never even showed up for battle."
Worse, on one key issue where the president actually showed up, his efforts left the country demonstrably less free.
President Nixon popularized the phrase "the war on drugs," but Reagan was the first chief executive who really took that metaphor seriously. Via executive order, he declared drug trafficking a "national security threat," and in a 1986 televised address he invoked World War II, calling drug abuse "a form of tyranny" and imploring Americans to "join us in this great, new national crusade."
As a result of that failed crusade, the United States now has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world.
Why, then, do most libertarians today remember our 40th president fondly? Edmund Morris captured Reagan's appeal nicely in a passage from his much-maligned biography, "Dutch":
"Across America and Europe, in huge areas of the world where commerce was once state-controlled, Reagan's philosophy of hard work and earned reward has made Marxism a memory. If [upon signing the '81 tax cuts] he had laid down his last pen ... and said to the press, 'Ten years from now, you fellows, there are going to be stock markets in Moscow and Shanghai,' guffaws would have filled the valley. But who can doubt that somewhere deep down (as he leaned back in his chair, put one high-heeled boot on the table, and mugged for the cameras), Dutch believed?"
Few at the time showed that kind of vision, and Reagan deserves enormous credit for it. Still, we shouldn't make any president into a plaster saint. There's an unhealthy touch of idolatry in the question, "What would Reagan do?"
Moreover, WWRD? is the wrong question to ask if you're looking to cut government back to its proper constitutional size. The hero who can accomplish that task has yet to emerge.
-- Examiner Columnist Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of "The Cult of the Presidency."
Maybe but doesn`t the House of Reps appropriate all spending ?
Weren`t the Socialist Democrats in charge down there?
The rest was military related and well-spent.
Article 1, Section 7-
All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.
And as a result of the Reagan tax cuts revenues to the Federal Treasury almost doubled during his Presidency.
Yes. I liked Reagan, but he should’ve used the veto pen more often.
yes, indeed the dems had control of congress and spent all they could. Also, Reagan had to rebuild the military after Carter decimated it.
RE: Weren`t the Socialist Democrats in charge down there?
Which brings up the next question -— why did Reagan not veto the excessive spending bills?
Also, why were the Departments that were targeted for elimination, not eliminated?
By that definition than George Bush was a raving leftists and Clinton was a conservative
Every budget Reagan sent up to the House (and yes, all spending bills must originate in the House) was literally declared Dead on Arrival by Tip O’Neil and his party, which controlled it until January 1995. This is why we did not have any balanced budgets until the late 90’s, before the ‘94 Republican class went native.
That is all the farther you need to read to understand this is a POS. I guess the 12 year old writer wasn't around for the Reagan Bashfest called FarmAid and that stupid Mellonhead song "Rain on the Scarecrow, Blood on the Plow".
Didn’t it come out that almost none of the FarmAid money has ever made it to the “intended” beneficiaries?
I am sure Reagan would have liked to do more than he was able to do to shrink government to something that is more of closer fit than XXXL. We had been living for decades with supersized government, likely larger than it is now, and that’s not something that you can just take away over night. It especially can’t be done with a congress dominated by Rats.
He did what he could which is far more of an effort to shrink the intrusive stuff than what we’ve gotten since. And for that he deserves my deepest admiration and gratitude.
Perhaps the most fitting tribute to this man’s greatness, and great he was, is that every faction - Socons, libertarians, neo-cons, paleocons, RINOs, moderates, and even democrats are claiming to be following his legacy.
Reagan focus was on supply side economic growth, and defending the US from Soviet arms buildup. He needed to work with the dems to rebuild a superpower military. Reagan had to throw the Dems a bone.
Balderdash and left-wing tripe. He was the greatest President of the 20th century.
Without him we would still be under the Soviet nuclear threat.
His mediocre successors, the Bush twins, screwed things up.
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