Posted on 04/23/2014 1:06:25 PM PDT by Josh Painter
David Corn of Mother Jones has assembled a number of clips from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) over the years criticizing former President Ronald Reagan for the budgets he signed into law. In some cases, Paul declared Reagan worse on budgetary issue than his predecessor, former President Jimmy Carter.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
This won’t be popular, but I don’t see a huge problem with this statement. Reagan was great on tax cuts and growing the overall economy. As far as the overall budget goes however, it didn’t get smaller. It grew just like under every other President. Deficits also exploded under Reagan. Of course, he also had to contend with a Democrat congress.
He was the best President of my lifetime, but he wasn’t perfect.
It bugs me when people give me crap for pointing out what a wacko Paul is
Oh well...
I understand, but my point is that no matter what someone says to ‘brand’ themselves, I'm not sure you can trust them anymore. I have no doubt that there are political operatives who ‘pose’ as X so that they can in the long run help Y.
In addition, there was a constant partisan media drumbeat about the recession that they first seemed to notice after Reagan took office; it helped push Demwits back into control in Congress and they trimmed off his tax cuts. Reagan’s tax cuts had some overlap with JFK’s business tax cut that he campaigned on — needed to “get America moving again”.
Unless it is the Present Occupant.
One ruled with incompetence. The other with malignance.
Can people please stop being taken in by this guy?
Beware of lefties bearing gifts. Corn put this together to create or increase anti-Paul sentiment among potential GOP primary voters. He did not do it as a public service to conservatives.
Did you somehow sense disagreement? Because we’re saying nearly the same thing I think.
Did he really say that?If he did he’s an idiot.
Yes, I thought the same thing.
Since when does Breitbart report on anything Mother Jones puts together?
Don’t forget about the 35 miles of beach front property.LMAO
He’ll land back in the water someday. :)
there’s a right way and a wrong way. cutting our defense capability is not the way.
No, I agree with your points entirely. I sometimes just can’t help myself when I’m irritated...
I took that snip from Brietbart but I believe it was in response to the MJ piece.
I wish Paul would have also mentioned that Reagan spent building back up or neglected military.
*snip*
Throughout President Reagan’s two terms (1981-1989), military spending was very high; however, he was able to accomplish it without breaking out into an economic sweat. Reagan’s administration managed it while enjoying noticeably positive growth u0097 albeit with massive budget deficits
*snip*
The Reagan administration managed to keep America out of a major war for nearly a decade u0097 but with several scary nuclear close calls. Much of the nation’s current firepower is a legacy of the Reagan years.
A very strong military helps keep that peace that I and others love so much, so that we don’t find ourselves forced to fight nasty wars or have anybody on our shores shooting.
We’re starting to shrink too much and slack. I don’t care how broke we are—cut other places and clean up the waste.
It won’t matter if all our bills are paid but we’ve left the doors to our house wide open, in a bad neighborhood, whilst we’re off to working to keep all the beautiful stuff in our unprotected home.
We will have only worked hard to let others take our stuff.
Runt Paul is a crapweasel libtardian, just like his old man!
oops—link to my snips
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1957.html
>>Reagan was great on tax cuts and growing the overall economy. As far as the overall budget goes however, it didn’t get smaller. It grew just like under every other President. Deficits also exploded under Reagan. Of course, he also had to contend with a Democrat congress.<<
Reagan was a compromiser in the best sense of the word. He came into office promising to lower the personal income tax rates (and did he ever!) and rebuild a military that Carter had seriously compromised. He did both and managed to do so because he was willing to compromise. That compromise involved letting the Democrat-controlled Congress continue the normal rate of spending.
The deficits that resulted were huge for the time, leading many to consider the tax cuts a mistake. And along with that, inflation was rampant and the economy was re-entering recession due to Volcker’s tight money. By 1982, I watched President Reagan give a speech where it was obvious that the weight of the world was on his shoulders and he was feeling every pound of it.
Fortunately, Volcker got the job done, the tax cuts worked as advertised, and the military was rebuilt. The result was that Bush I got to preside over the demise of the Soviet Union and Clinton got to preside over an economy so strong that even with record spending, he was able to reduce deficits to near zero. Neither of those would have happened without Reagan’s being willing to compromise to get what he knew he needed.
As for Rand Paul, I suspect he’s right in what he said, but that his quotes are being carefully selected to disadvantage him.
Well, there you go.
Paul later responded to the Mother Jones piece with a statement: "I have always been and continue to be a great supporter of Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and the millions of jobs they created. Clearly spending during his tenure did not lessen, but he also had to contend with Democrat majorities in Congress."
How about trying to find out if what he says is right or wrong, rather than just jumping on him for heresy or lèse-majesté?
So far as I can tell domestic discretionary spending increased faster under Carter than under Reagan, but the deficit and the national debt did increase faster under Reagan than under Carter. Is that the way it was?
I don't know about overall spending or total domestic spending. Bear in mind, too, that Reagan served two terms to Carter's one, so someone looking at the total increase, rather than the rate of increase might mistakenly come up with some wrong conclusions.
Was Paul right or wrong on the specifics? Whether he was or not, the writer's outrage looks misplaced and exaggerated.
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