Details of Reagan's 1983 Stimulus

[serrano2008]

At the beginning of 1983, after Reagan's tax cuts failed to get us out of the recession, he came back with tax increases and signed a big stimulus bill. I was curious what his stimulus bill included and found the following:



Syracuse Herald-Journal - March 25, 1983

$4.6 Billion Jobs Measure Signed
by Marueen Santini, AP Writer

Washington - President Reagan has signed into law a bill that gives a $4.6 Billion booster shot to the economy in public works projects and provides additional billions urgently needed by more than half the states to continue paying unemployment benefits.

The House gave final congressional approval to the anti-recession legislation late yesterday and the president signed it shortly after it arrived at the White House, about 9:30p.m.

With many congressmen eager to leave town for a 10-day Easter recess, there was no formal signing ceremony.

Although the major focus of the bill is to create jobs, it also contains a $5 billion emergency supplemental appropriateion to replenish a special fund from 27 states and the District of Columbia are borrowing to meet their unemployment compensation payments.

"We've absolutely run out of money." Jack Hashtan of the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration said yesterday.

The recession-relief portion of the bill contains a provision ensuring that about $2 billion of the money will go to areas hardest hit by the recession.

The measure also provides about $325 million in food and shelter for victims of the longest recession since World War II, as well as several hundred million dollars more for social programs.

It contains $1 billion in Community Development Block Grants to local governments, of which $375 million may pay for public service jobs. that was pushed by women's groups concerned that men would benefit from the public works money in the bill.

Most of the rest of the money will be used for a variety of construction projects, including flood control, highways, Veterans Administration hospital repair, airport improvements and the Tenessee Valley Authority.

[Common Sense Party]

1. $4.6 Billion sounds like chump change.

I guess it was more like $10B over all.

[Democrats_win]

2. Before Reagan, deficit: $60 billion. After: $190 billion. W. Bush: $1 trillion.

$4 billion dollars was a lot of money for our government back then. Now, it's like spending 20 dollars.

Yet Reagan and W. Bush were big spenders. Obama's stimulus is just like W. Bush's except the money in Obama's plan keeps the money in America while bush sent it to the Middle East. bush doubled the national debt in his 8 years of drunken government.

[Winterblues]

4. Bush* added One trillion in just his last few months, he added over five trillion overall.

Bush* added more to our National Debt than all 42 previous Administrations combined.

[Winterblues]

3. longest recession since World War II,

And this was after he had been in Office for more the two years. He created the Recession with his huge tax cuts and then had to back track to get us out of it. If WW II was so successful in pulling us out of the Depression why did we go into recession during it?

[Common Sense Party]

5. Well, the '73-'75 recession was a doozy, too...about same length.

The Reagan recession started with rising oil prices due to the Iranian revolution, which led to outrageous inflation, which led to Volker's Fed clamping down on the money supply by jacking up rates, which led to the recession.

[Winterblues]

6. The outragious inflation was before Reagan

Remember Ford's campaign slogan WIN (whip inflation now) Oil prices rose rapidly under Carter and that was a major reason he was ousted. No the main reason the Reagan Administration suffered a major recession during his first term was the HUGE tax cuts for the wealthy, and a major loss in confidence by the consumer.

[dkofos]

7. Roll back the reagan tax cuts!!