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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (68759)	1/20/2014 10:52:33 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Reagan apparently didn't seem to usually care to propose cuts that had zero chance of making it through congress. Also the biggest areas where entitlements (where unforuntely he was not prone to restrain spending, but neither where the presidents before or after him), and the military where he thought (with some justification) that there was a need to rebuild. But despite all of that he did propose lower spending that what congress approved. In 7 out of 8 years Reagan's proposed budgets where lower than what Congress authorized. freerepublic.com You have requests lower then actual spending in 7 out of 8 years, for a total (including the 1 year where Reagan requested more) of 2.86% less than Congress authorized. And that's ignoring the fact that lower initial budgets would have made a smaller baseline for future budgets (ignoring it largely because its hard to quantify with certainty, with smaller initial budgets there may have been more political pressure for future increases despite the lower budget baseline). The spending request was 7.3% less in the first budget (which probably had less effort to be conserned about what congress might accept). And Reagan wasn't helpless in response to the budget's congess passed, he could have vetoed them. But he wasn't a huge "shut down the government" guy. There where 8 shutdowns but none over 3 days. He engaged in brinksmanship over the budget to try to influence his direction, but he didn't just draw a line and refuse to move from that. Perhaps he should have, but certainly he would have been criticized as lot more if he did, and it would have sabotaged the rest of his agenda. Edit - And spending is a major issue of the fiscal health of the government, independent of its direct effect on deficits. The feds can only get so much from the economy. If you have lower spending and lower taxes and high deficits, its better than high spending and taxes and high deficits since in the former case taxes can be increased to the extent it helps, while in the later case the available tax revenue is largely used up, and even if a tax increase generates a short term increase in revenue it will likely result in a long term decrease when starting from high rates. Despite the lack of entitlement reform, and the increase in defense spending, spending increases slowed from 4 percent per year under Carter, to 2.5% per year under Reagan, and federal spending declined as a percentage of GDP.