Rand Paul will be having a serious problem with his party. It seems he has been telling the truth about their deity before he decided to jump on the false narrative about Ronald Regan’s time in office. It turns out his words and the realities were not pretty.
Washington Bureau Chief David Korn at Mother Jones reported about it in the videos in the Rachel Maddow snippet above. In the snippet Rand Paul tells certain truths about Ronald Reagan’s ‘fiscal achievements’.
The deficit went through the roof under Reagan. So how long did it take Ron Paul to figure out that the guy he had liked, endorsed, campaigned for, campaigned for him? The very first [Reagan] budget. Ron Paul voted “no” against the very first Reagan budget… Everybody loved this “great” budget. It was a $100 billion in debt. This was three times greater than Jimmy Carter’s worst deficit.
You know, we wanted Reagan to veto a budget or to have balanced budgets and he didn’t do it. And it wasn’t anything personal against him. I think his philosophy was good. I just don’t know that he had the energy or the follow-through to get what we needed.
People want to like Reagan. He’s very likable. And what he had to say most of the time was a great message. But the deficits exploded under Reagan. The Democrats said, “Well, the deficit’s going up because you reduced the tax rates and supply side economics doesn’t work.” But the interesting thing is, if you look at the numbers, tax rates went down in the early ’80s, tax revenue did rise. The reason the deficits exploded is they ignored spending. Domestic spending went up at a greater clip under Reagan than it did under Carter.
Some say, well that’s fine, but there were good old days. We did at one time…When we had Reagan, we were fiscal conservatives. Well, unfortunately, even that wasn’t true. When Reagan was elected in 1980, the first bill they passed was called the Gramm-Latta bill of 1981, and Republicans pegged it as this great step forward. Well, Jimmy Carter’s last budget was about $34 or $36 billion in debt. Well, it turns out, Reagan’s first budget turned out to be $110 billion dollars in debt. And each successive year, the deficit rose throughout Reagan’s two terms.
As Republicans, it’s been very easy for us to say we’re fiscally conservative and we’re for balanced budgets. It’s never happened. We were in charge in the Reagan term, the next Bush’s term, this last Bush. The deficits were horrendous under the Republicans…During Reagan’s two terms, domestic spending went up faster than Jimmy Carter.
We live in such bad times that if you don’t have somebody who truly believes that we need to take an ax to government, you’re not going to get anything done…Even when we elected Reagan. A lot of us loved the rhetoric of Reagan. My dad supported Reagan in 1976 when only four US congressmen would stand up for him. The deficit still exploded…The deficit exploded because domestic spending rose faster under Reagan, so did military, but domestic spending rose faster under Reagan than under Jimmy Carter…We have to admit our failings because we’re not going to get new people unless we become believable as a party again.
Will Rand Paul’s statement about Ronald Reagan give him heartburn?
If these statements were made by establishment Republicans, they likely would have blown over. They would have likely been attributed to being the utterings of a RINO. Given that it is coming out of Rand Paul’s mouth makes it more problematic.
Will these past truthful statements stop Rand Paul’s run for the presidency? Or will it give the Tea Party pause. Will it have them reevaluate their rigidity?
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