By LEAH MONTEJANO
Staff Writer
Reagan was the 40th President of the United States from 1981 – 1989. During Reagan’s presidency, he took a difficult stance on the Cold War and decided to increase military spending. Many people believe Reagan’s aggressive stance is what led to the collapse of the U.S.S.R, and Reagan’s Economic policies may have improved the economy. Although, critics argued that the increased government spending took money from social spending.
In Ronald Reagan’s Inaugural Address he stated the biggest issue is the government itself; he goes on to imply the only solution to fix this is to limit government power (including spending). “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem . . . We’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government” (1). Reagan would continue to disregard this speech and increase both military and defense spending because the Soviet Union posed a threat. However, Reagan did show some improvement with the unemployment rates and debt during this time. According to a statistics graph, there were unemployment and debt increases from 1982-1985, the highest unemployment rate being 9.5% and debt being 20.6%. Even with these increases due to tax cuts and defense spending Reagan still managed to pull out a 10% decrease in debt and a 4% decrease in unemployment towards the end of his presidency.
In conclusion, Reagan did make mistakes such as the disregard of his original plan in his Inaugural speech and making promises he could not always keep which would affect his colleagues. But, Reagan also did good things as well such as the improvement in unemployment rates and debt, and the economic decisions he made such as the reduction of the federal income tax, reduced government regulation, and tightening money supply in order to decrease inflation. The good things Reagan did for our economy outweighed the bad he did.