Just for entertainment, Neocon, I'll take my own challenge, and try to come up with a 1989 budget 24.5% smaller that the historical one. From the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 520, rounded to billions:
$1143b Total outlays
$ 863b After hypothetical 24.5% reduction
Add up:
$304b National Defense
$233b Social Security
$ 85b Medicare
$169b Interest on the Debt
=====
$791b Total of Defense, SS, Medicare, Interest
Which leaves a cool $72b for everything else, historically budgeted at $352b. Want to try your hand at that one, Neocon? An 80% reduction across the board on everything else would have done it, or Reagan could have zeroed out 80% of the remaining federal programs. Or, you can hypothesize that Reagan would have cut SS and Medicare, while raising SS and Medicare taxes of course, if you want to keep revenue the same. Or he could have defaulted on the debt, or cut defense.
Facts are stupid things, as the great man said. The "facts" presented in reagan.webteamone.com seem pretty typical of the kind favored by the right wing "fact" mongers around here. I reserve the right to be amused. As I was by the mumble I'm replying to, it looks like a good synthesis of "the best data" from "the major metastudy". May as well outlaw public breast feeding while you're at it. I'm not kidding, either. |
