But new congresses and new presidents rarely overturn the past. Eisenhower, for instance, never considered repealing any of the New Deal except for the Reconstruction Finance Corp. Richard M. Nixon, whose daughter is pro-Obama, expanded the Great Society. Ronald Reagan changed little of Carterism, as I recall, but maybe there was something I forgot. GWB refused to investigate the thrashing of the White House by Clintoids on January 19-20, 2001.
Reagan and the Republican congress actually ended a lot of policies started by Carter or before Carter: they ended “windfall profits taxes” on oil producers, shut down Carter’s government-run synthetic fuels corporation, ended some ineffective government jobs programs, and very importantly, they cut income tax rates dramatically and indexed income tax brackets to inflation. Those tax cuts and indexation gave a big boost to the economy as it rebounded up from the 1982 recession.