Top 10 Reasons Ronald Reagan Was a Terrible President

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Top 10 Reasons Ronald Reagan Wasn’t the Great President You Always Hear About

Ronald Reagan died more than two decades ago, and yet he remains to be one of the most talked about figures in the history of American politics. In fact, it is nearly impossible in any political debate, particularly in Republican debate, that his name wouldn’t be mentioned. Reagan has become a legend among Republicans and conservatives. They even considered him as the greatest being to ever walk the planet. But if you will search the facts, you will discover that this man, who was

regarded as a beloved father of many Americans, was actually a terrible, and in fact, one of the most hated presidents of all time. Here are the top reasons why some people hate the 40^th president of the United States.

10. He Raised Taxes.

 

Reagan was known as a great tax cutter, but the truth is he was not. While it’s true that he cut taxes during his administration, he only did that once, and then raised them several times, yearly after that. Reagan campaigned in 1980 election on reducing taxes. And people voted for him because they believed in him. When he won the presidency, he immediately signed the Economic Tax Act of 1981, which had reduced the top marginal rate from 70 to 50 percent and dramatically decreased the individual tax rates by 23 percent. Oh, what a relief it was for tax payers!

 

But only a few months after he signed that law, he asked for about a third of it back. In 1982, Reagan quickly signed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act– the largest tax increase in American history – which raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year. But that was just the beginning. After he signed that law, he again, supported another tax increase known as Highway Revenue Act of 1982, which doubled the gasoline tax. The following year, Reagan signed the Social Security Amendments of 1983, which raised payroll tax and started taxing the benefit checks of higher earners.

Over the remainder of his presidency, Reagan continued to approve a series of tax increases, which eventually took back most of his 1981 tax cut, including the Deficit Deduction Act of 1984 and the historic Tax Reform Act of 1986. As what former Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” said in an interview, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration.”

9. He Tripled The National Debt.

As we know, Ronald Reagan campaigned for presidency to cut taxes as he thought this was the answer to the nations’ economic mess. He believed that a tax cut would help the government generate more revenue as this would certainly enable the rich to spend more, invest more, and create new jobs. Although the Congress was skeptical about Reagan’s idea, they still approved tax cuts for business and individuals.

 

The Economic Recovery Act of 1981, which was signed by Reagan to cut taxes, was supposed to increase savings and investments, as well as help the economy recover from financial crisis, but it failed to achieve its purpose. Despite the huge tax breaks given to business and individuals, business investment fell and unemployment rate increased due to recession. The major tax cut, which was supposed to solve the economic problem, resulted in an overall decline in revenue and increase of government debt. Because of this, Reagan had to raise taxes after he signed his tax cut law. But despite the 11 tax hikes that he enacted, Reagan was never able to control the deficit from growing. From just having $994 billion debt when he came into office, Reagan grew it to $2.9 trillion when his term ended in 1989.

8. He Increased Unemployment Rate.

Truth be told, when Reagan took over the leadership of the U.S. in 1981, the country was in a terrible shape. But it was already starting to recover from the terrible damage caused by Carter’s policies and recession since the Great Depression in 1930s. However, Reagan’s monetary policies in 1981 completely aborted, and in fact, worsen the recovery. When Reagan took office, the unemployment rate in the U.S. was 7.5 percent and declining. But after he passed some laws in 1981, which cut the taxes of the wealthy and increased the taxes of middle and lower class, unemployment rate began to increase.

 

During this year, tens of thousands of unemployed workers crisscrossed the country to find jobs but were unable to get one. Businesses started to lay off employees and hire only few workers. Some of them even began to ship jobs out of the country to be able get cheap labor. Millions of people continued to lose their jobs and as 1982 came to a close, the unemployment rate reached it peaked at 10.8 percent – the highest since 1930s.

 

Sure, Reagan was able to lower unemployment rate as the years went on by creating more jobs. But unfortunately, those jobs that were created tended to be low-paid, which barely helped the Americans.

7. He Expanded The Size Of The Government.

During his 1980 campaign for presidency, Reagan promised to cut both federal spending and taxes. When he won, he immediately followed through on part of his campaign promises, signing a major reduction in tax rates. But in the case of cutting government, he failed to follow through on that promise; rather went in the opposite direction.

 

During the Reagan administration, government spending increased 2.5 percent per year. In 1983, Reagan agreed to a $165 billion bailout of Social Security. The budget for the Department of Education and Energy, which Reagan promised to reduce, ended up doubling to $22.7 billion. The budget for farm programs has also risen from $21 billion in 1981 to $51.4 billion in 1987. He also expanded Medicare, gave additional funds for drought-relief programs, increased the defense budget, and increased the U.S. contribution to International Monetary Fund. And this doesn’t include the creation of Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of $163 billion.

 

Worse is all these programs were funded by deficit spending – the reason why the government tripled its gross federal debt, from $994 billion to 2.9 trillion, during Reagan’s administration.

6. He Negotiated With Terrorists.

In addition to reducing tax and spending, Reagan pledged in his 1980 presidential campaign that the U.S. would never negotiate with terrorists. But as usual, he broke that promise. It began in 1985 when Reagan and some senior U.S. officials secretly provided weapons to Iran, in exchange for the safe release of American hostages held by Iranian proxies in Lebanon. Well, the secret trade was successful. Eventually, after the arms were transferred and sold, the American hostages were released. However, much of the money that was generated from the arm sales went to fund the Nicaragua Contra rebels – something that the U.S. government had prohibited from doing. And even the trade was successful, it didn’t stopped the terrorists to take more hostages; in fact, it just encouraged them more.

 

Months after, the illegal trade remained to be unknown to the public. It wasn’t until 1986 that the controversial news has gotten out. A Lebanese magazine published a series of articles in 1986, exposing the illegal transaction between the U.S. government and Iran terrorists. When it went public, it became an enormous political scandal, raising a lot of questions and demanding a lot of investigation. But days later, Reagan finally admitted that he indeed swapped U.S. weapons for American hostages.