President Ronald Reagan

Well fellow bloggers I’m finally getting to that point where I’m almost done with all my blog posts and after reflecting on all of the things I have written so far, I have to say that I am a little displeased with myself that I haven’t written more on previous presidents. Looking back at this semester I realized that I have become a little enamored with the Obama administration, but I think I can still save myself and can draw my attention now to some other presidents that have greatly influenced the role and the position of the presidency.

One President that I was greatly interested in learning about was President Reagan. I think Ronald Reagan was a fascinating character in our history because of his conservative roots. I personally like some of the different ideas that Reagan presented with his conservative beliefs. A smaller government, more tax cuts, and increased spending in defense are all very interesting ideas that Reagan had during his presidency.

 We will always remember Ronald Reagan’s famous quote, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” I personally agree with him on the issue of the involvement of our government in different aspects of our lives. I think one current issue that is affecting us the most, is the government’s involvement with our economy during this recession right now. We have bailed failed banks and businesses and we have paid the price for trying to save these dying organizations. Our national deficit has shot through the roof, and it will only continue to soar as our government becomes involved in more and more issues like healthcare and global warming.

 Another aspect about Reagan conservatism that I thought was very interesting was the idea of increasing tax cuts for the middle class. I think this entire idea of creating more tax cuts is interesting, because as the national government spends more money to give out tax cuts to the middle class our national debt actually increased during the process. The justification for doing this was that if people have fewer taxes to pay, they will use that money to put back into the economy. In essence, this sounded like a reasonable idea, but in practice I think it only created more problems, because at the end of his term President Reagan had increased the national deficit significantly. I think this idea of tax cuts is great, but the problem is dealing with the debt that comes away with trying to grant families more tax breaks. I think if our government could implement a system like this without increasing the national deficit too much, it would be great for trying to get economy back on track.

 Finally, the last issue that we discussed in class was Reagan’s beliefs that we should increase spending on national defense. Today, defense spending is an issue that we don’t really talk about much. It’s often the issue that we sweep under the rug, because as we criticize our government for increasing the national deficit for spending billions of dollars on social programs, we forget about the billions of dollars that we spend every year on national defense. Interestingly enough, just a couple of months ago, Congress agreed to spend 680 billion dollars for national defense. I think this issue is significant, but I find myself questioning whether or not it is so important to spend that much money on our national defense. I think Ronald Reagan was a very interesting  president, and we can learn a lot from him and his policies.

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