Positive References to President Ronald Reagan Are Misplaced

Past US President, Ronald Reagan

If any of you watched the many Republican debates as I did before they decided on John McCain, you will remember how all of the potential candidates continually referred to wanting to duplicate the legacy of Ronald Reagan. One political Blogger at the time said; "I tried to keep track of all the many references to Ronald Reagan's presidency, but I quickly ran out of fingers". What really disturbs me is, "Why in the world would anyone want to run the country like Ronald Reagan.....?"

Today, most Americans don't understand that there are many people in the country that are having a lot of problems in living with the legacy of Ronald Reagan. As I've written many times, today we continue to pay for the deficits that occurred with the Republicans under Ronald Reagan that continued under Bush I and now Bush II. (Please remember that together, these 3 Republican US Presidents are responsible for US deficits of more than all the previous Democratic presidents "added together since George Washington.") Why would anyone want to run a country like that...????

People still say, "Look at how great the economy was when Ronald Reagan was President." Hey, you give me a "Trillion dollar" credit card to run the country and I'll show you just how good the economy can be made to look. People also don't remember that shortly after taking office, Reagan stated that he was puzzled and concerned about the "runaway US deficits" that were approaching $80 Billion dollars. Only 2 years later, those deficits were then running at more than $200 Billion dollars. No other peace-time President had ever run up huge deficits like Reagan, who would smile and tell everyone it was just; "business as usual". Even to this day, few people have ever raised that issue regarding his poor performance for skewering the people and the economy, and then leaving their children and their children's, children such a large debt. Both Bush I and Bush II did not lose sight of Reagan's performance and they both followed Reagan's playbook accordingly. (Actually, Bush I did take a stab at improving the situation, but he lost the presidency to Clinton because of raising taxes, not because of the deficits.)

Most Americans don't understand that many of the support programs that they depend on have disappeared due to Reagan's decisions and these large deficits. As a small example, the budgets for education, healthcare, infrastructure maintenance and up-grades, transportation improvements and support for the country's military veterans have all suffered due to the high debt servicing costs of the on-going deficits. Actually, President Clinton had to also raise taxes in order to cover the deficits that were left by Reagan's spending.

By following suite to Reagan's spending ways, George W. Bush took the Clinton surplus that he inherited very quickly to today's more than a $500 Billion dollar deficit. With record numbers of "Baby Boomers" now approaching retirement, there will soon be an even larger burden on the US government's resources.

Another area that I question in following Reagan's legacy is in dealing with the issue of homelessness. For those of us old enough to remember, prior to Ronald Reagan's presidency, there was very little "homelessness" in America. (However, those people in California had some early warning on what to expect from Reagan due to his lack of support for the mentally disabled, the poor and low-cost housing as the Governor of California.)

One of Ronald Reagan's first moves as president was to remove most of the federal support for low-cost housing. Upon taking office, President Reagan cut the housing budget for the poor and disabled from $32 Billion to $7 Billion. Now some people at the time said, "that's great that Reagan cut that kind of spending". Unfortunately, no one considered what the cost was going to be for removing housing from thousands of the poor, disabled and disenfranchised and putting them out on the streets. The costs for the increases in crime, drug trafficking, pan-handling, living on the street, increase in street gangs and gang riots far out weighed the original cost of the housing budget for the less fortunate and their low-cost housing.

When asked about the homeless people on the street across from the White House, President Reagan responded with; "They make it their own choice for staying out there." In a subsequent interview in Parade Magazine, Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis said: "How do you argue with a person who states that the people who are sleeping on the streets of America are homeless by choice." Patti Davis also commented about her fear that she might someday be attacked by a homeless person while jogging if she were recognized as the President's daughter.

Finally, the failure of Ronald Reagan to make the right decisions in the early 1980's for going after "AIDS" has caused the loss of thousands of lives. It is very unfortunate that the "AIDS epidemic" was first discovered within the homosexual community and subsequently became known as the "Gay Disease". Of course, today over 98% of all AIDS cases world-wide are with heterosexual men and women. But, because of the Republican's attitude in the 1980's regarding the "homosexual life style", Reagan didn't even utter the word "AIDS" as the US President until 1987.

Rene Durazzo, the International Program Director for the nonprofit San Francisco AIDS Foundation stated that "At that time, if this had been affecting straight men and women, nobody would have just sat around as they did. Reagan had the power to make world-changing decisions. Because he failed to do so, we lost hundreds of thousands of people." The Centers for Disease Control estimates that over 1 million Americans and today, millions of Africans are now infected with HIV / AIDS. Durazzo stated; "We've spent billions of dollars because of the AIDS epidemic and faced millions of dollars in lost productivity. This could have been minimized if the Reagan Administration had just acted sooner."

Yes, Ronald Reagan has been praised for instilling a sense of pride in America that had gone wanting since the problems with Iran and the American Embassy hostage situation. This was a very important achievement for the him and the country. However, Ronald Reagan also needs to be held accountable for his lack of success in the other areas of his Presidency that we will all be paying on for many years from now.

As I said; "Why in the world would anyone want to run the country like Ronald Reagan?"