MOVING ON FROM RONALD REAGAN: Henry Olsen and Pete Wehner have a lengthy cover story at Commentary on moving on from Ronald Reagan. vlt.tc/1p6i “Most significant, Reagan did not roll back government to the extent he promised. Indeed, especially after his first year in the presidency, he devoted most of his energies elsewhere. Thus, although at first approving a plan to cut Social Security benefits for prospective early retirees, he quickly capitulated and scrapped it. Nor did he ever mount a serious effort to reform the structural design of entitlement programs. Altogether, during the fiscal years of his presidency (1981–88), federal spending averaged almost 22 percent of GDP, higher than it was under Carter and the highest it had ever been until the Obama presidency. “In short, like most conservatives, Reagan opposed Big Government in the abstract more than he did in the particulars. An illustration: Traveling to the Midwest in 1986, the president boasted to a farm audience that “no area of the budget, including defense, has grown as fast as our support of agriculture,†adding that “this year alone we’ll spend more…than the total amount the last administration provided in all its four years.†There is no doubt that, overall, he would have preferred to cut government more, but there was no public will for it, and to move adamantly on this front would have forced him to forgo other, more achievable goals, such as deregulation, cutting tax rates, and building up the military.†Former Reagan official Don Devine responds. vlt.tc/1p6j “They do concede Reagan was “unwavering†on cutting marginal tax rates, implementing Reaganomics generally, firing the air controllers, and winning the Cold War. Yet, he “did not roll back government to the extent he promised†He did plan to cut Social Security but quickly retreated. By the end of his presidency, “federal spending averaged 22 percent of GDP, higher than it was under Carter and the highest it had ever been until the Obama presidency.†“Whoa, just a minute; this is cooking the books. Reagan’s 23 percent tax cut drove down total spending from a projected 23.8 percent. More important, total federal spending includes defense, which Reagan promised to increase and did. If one looks at non-defense discretionary spending, which is what he said he would cut, and a president can control, Reagan decreased this spending absolutely by 9.6 percent over his two terms, the only president in modern times to do so (everyone else posting increases, the two Bushes higher than Carter or Clinton). Even including entitlements, Reagan reduced total domestic spending relatively, from 17.4 to 15.6 of gross domestic product (GDP)… “It was not human dignity that came first for Reagan but, as he specified in his Guildhall farewell, “belief in the rights of humanity†that comes from a “higher law†supported by “prayer and its power.†Even his foreign policy was “not so much a struggle of armed might†as of “faith and will.†Under that higher law, a free human rationality wrestles with a complex tradition of values that requires a synthesis of ideas and institutions to discover the best practical resolution.†—via The Transom
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 13:46:37 +0000
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