In order for America to afford the tax cuts and increase in defense spending, Regan reduced spending on important welfare and social programs, which only increased poverty in America and widened the gap between the rich and the poor. An example of a welfare program which Reagan reduced support towards, was food-stamps. In 1983, Reagan cut down the outlay on food stamps from $11.8 million to $9.6 billion, and the cuts would continue to be about $2-3 billion yearly for the rest of his presidency (Danziger, n.d). Bill Moyers, a former press secretary of the White House said that the cuts in food stamps are “putting people into a 1981 version of the bread line (Hayward, 2010).” The largest reduction however which Ronald Reagan imposed was reducing the amount of money being spent on housing for the low income.
After only one year of presidency, Reagan cut the budget on this subsidy from $35 million to $17.5 million. As well, homelessness was extraordinarily large in bigger cities, and these
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America was hopeful that Reagan would be able to solve the “stagflation” which the country had experienced, and he thrived at accomplishing that. He was able to turn around America’s economy from going backwards towards a progressing future. In contradiction, Reagan created a federal debt so large that it was 3-fold the previous accumulated debt, and would be nearly impossible to eradicate. As well, he helped eliminate America’s middle class by giving more to the wealthy and removing important welfare programs. There is no dubiety that the money which Reagan allowed the wealthy to retain never did “trickle down”. The president did allow America’s economy to begin to burgeon after its decline, however Reaganomics can be proved unsuccessful by the negative impacts caused, such as increased debt and poverty, which began to damage the American economy less than a decade