It's the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, and the right-wing Reagan revisionists are hard at work distorting the real history and record of Reagan. It is odd that the Tea Party would celebrate the President who brought historical deficit spending and raised taxes 11 times, not to mention his support of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and his palling around with the Communist leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom he pledged to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Reagan campaigned against "big government" and the debt, and in eight years he more than tripled it from $700 billion to $3 trillion! In fact, Reagan ran up more debt than all preceding U.S. presidents combined!
His version of "supply-side" economics ("Reaganomics") was a disaster that failed to increase enough revenue to overcome his doubling of the military budget and other expansions of government. And it was Ronald Reagan who supported the doubling of the payroll tax to save the "socialist" Social Security system which is still a target of the right-wing corporate elite.
His version of "supply-side" economics ("Reaganomics") was a disaster that failed to increase enough revenue to overcome his doubling of the military budget and other expansions of government. And it was Ronald Reagan who supported the doubling of the payroll tax to save the "socialist" Social Security system which is still a target of the right-wing corporate elite.
His administration was plagued by scandals and crimes, including the Iran-Contra scandal, which uncovered an illegal secret government operation in the basement of the White House to support the contra terrorists in Nicaragua by selling military arms to the Iranian government, all in violation of U.S. and international law.. in fact the Reagan administration was found guilty of supporting terrorism against the Nicaraguan government by the World Court! And somehow he was saved from impeachment by an inept Democratic congress which could not impeach him for illegal actions they largely supported.
So here's to the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan!
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