I suppose everyone is entitled to a little bit of re-writing history, but to argue that Reagan started with a government that had a balanced budget is, well, a fantastic stretch.

For the four years preceding Reagan (better known as the "Carter Years" there was a deficit run each and every year. (http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.shtml)Reagan did not inherit a Balanced budget. Not even close. I always thought it an interesting bit of history that prior to 1999, the last "balanced budget was in 1969, and that was only after "using" the Social Security surplus to balance the books.

Just thought you might want to know.

In addition, Reagan started with double digit inflation (12.5% for 1980, ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt), double digit interest rates (the federal reserve, or PRIME was at 13.35 in 1980, http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data/Annual/H15_FF_O.txt), and unemployment was at a more "reasonable" 7.1% level. (http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet)

I suppose everyone is entitled to a little bit of re-writing history, but to argue that Reagan started with a government that had a balanced budget is, well, a fantastic stretch.

For the four years preceding Reagan (better known as the "Carter Years" there was a deficit run each and every year. (http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.shtml... did not inherit a Balanced budget. Not even close. I always thought it an interesting bit of history that prior to 1999, the last "balanced budget was in 1969, and that was only after "using" the Social Security surplus to balance the books.

Just thought you might want to know.

In addition, Reagan started with double digit inflation (12.5% for 1980, ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt), double digit interest rates (the federal reserve, or PRIME was at 13.35 in 1980, http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data...), and unemployment was at a more "reasonable" 7.1% level. (http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputSer...)