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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs
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To: TimF who wrote (40904)2/4/2010 12:41:37 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof   of 71588
 
Re: [Smaller government: Federal employment grew by 61,000 during Reagan’s presidency] "Which doesn't mean that Reagan didn't support smaller government, only that he failed to shrink it."

That's certainly a fair comment to make!

I'd say that it goes double or even triple with the example of "federal deficits" though!

Reagan (famously!) ran against the big, bad deficits posted by Carter... only to (in the course of it's two terms in office) preside over a vast expansion of federal deficit spending so great as to relegate Carter's piddling deficits to the Minor Leagues by comparison to what Reagan's budgets did.

And, the way I would incorporate your perfectly fair observation into my own thinking would be to say that... although President Reagan's RHETORIC was famously anti-deficits, in actuality he accomplished a vast expansion of federal spending and federal deficit borrowing.

(Which comes back to my number one rule when dealing with politicians: ALWAYS pay much more attention to WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO then what they say!)

This era marked the sad start of what has been, unfortunately, a MODERN TRADITION in American governance ever since: the evolution of PERMANENT STRUCTURAL DEFICITS... regardless of whichever political party holds the reins of power... they EACH have their constituencies to please and their OWN PET SPENDING PROJECTS to promote... and they are all quite willing to DEFICIT SPEND to do that....
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