Onstead, Sullivan was on hand to second the critique. "This is a big-government agenda," he said. "It is fueled by a new ideology, the ideology of Christian fundamentalism." The bearded pundit offered his own indictment of Bush: "complete contempt" for democratic processes, torture of detainees, ignoring habeas corpus and a "vast expansion of the federal government." The notion, he said, that the "Thatcher-Reagan legacy that many of us grew up to love and support would end this way is an astonishing paradox and a great tragedy."
I know the myth of the Reagan era is one of those consensus things impervious to fact but lets go to the numbers.
In 1981 when Reagan took office, as a percent of GDP federal outlays were 22.2% of GDP. When he left, in 1989, federal outlays were an incredibly shrunken 21.2%. Revenues went from 19.6% to 18.4%, which is why we were blessed with those lovely Reagan deficits.
Under George Bush II, outlays went from 18.5 to 20.1% of GDP in 2005, and revenues from 19.8 to 17.5%. An increase in outlays, to be sure, but federal expenditures are still smaller, as a percentage of GDP, than they were at the end of the Reagan era of small government.
So, yes, under Reagan the federal government shrunk by a wee bit and under Bush it's grown by a bit more but the point is the Reagan era was not a magical age of tiny government and ponies.
I suppose mentioning illegally trading arms for hostages, supporting nun-killing Central American death squads, the Marine incident in Lebanon, and of course the incredible number of Reagan administration officials who were indicted/convicted would be a wee bit too much.