Indeed, he did.
But one of the observable facts of the last forty years is that a great deal of well-meaning legislation has been co-opted and perverted by Democrat administrations and the bureaucracy.
EPA, Dept of Education, Affirmitive Action, ADA, Clean Air Act, you name it. They all started out as modest and unobtrusive, with admirable goals.
And, then, the liberals got ahold of them...and distorted them into blunt instruments to attack American freedoms.
Liberals are parasites dedicated to the destruction of the host.
That's true, and some of those liberals were Republicans, and some of them were named Bush and Ford and Nixon.
Do you know who put a moratorium on more area for offshore exploration and new drilling than any other president, and which presidents continued it?
Do you know who signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, No Child Left Behind, who supported and worked on Goals 2000 that Clinton later signed?
The problem is, with the exception of Reagan, the Republican presidents haven't been so different from the Dim presidents on many issues since the 1960s. The problem is not the difference between Democrats and Republicans, but the different between conservatives and progressives, and the progressives have been found in both parties and especially in the federal courts on many issues.