Ronald Reagan in My Life, by Bill Clinton

On Budget & Economy: Increased national debt from $1T in 1980 to $3T in 1988

The problem with applying the traditional analysis to current conditions was that under Reagan and Bush, we had built a large structural deficit that persisted in good times and bad. When President Reagan took office, the national debt was $1 trillion. It tripled during his eight years, thanks to the big tax cuts in 1981 and increases in spending. Under President Bush, the debt continued to increase again, by one-third, in just four years. Now it totaled $4 trillion. Annual interest payments on the deb were the third-largest item in the federal budget after defense and Social Security.

The deficit was the inevitable result of so-called supply-side economics, the theory that the more you cut taxes, the more the economy will grow, with the growth producing more tax revenue at lower tax rates than previously had been collected at higher ones. Of course it didn't work, and the deficits exploded throughout the recovery of the 1980s.

Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.458-459 Jun 21, 2004

The above quotations are from My Life, by Bill Clinton. Click here for other excerpts from My Life, by Bill Clinton. Click here for other excerpts by Ronald Reagan. Click here for a profile of Ronald Reagan.
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Page last updated: Feb 19, 2019