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Congress:History is Calling, Please Answer

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

In the spring of 1981 Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman sat for weeks at a long table in room H-228 of the Capitol, his beady eyes peering over stacks of thick, black 3-ring binders containing the detail on most every federal program.

Stockman was holding over budget negotiations with his former colleagues in the House of Representatives. His mission was to cut spending, cut taxes, increase defense, and help his President, Ronald Reagan, usher in a new era of smaller, limited government, entrepreneurial innovation, individual freedom, and global prestige.

Piece of cake.

Few if any at the table, maybe with the exception of Jack Kemp, knew they were making history at the time. But they were, in the same way congressional leaders did for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal and McKinley’s and Teddy Roosevelt’s regimes of political and regulatory reforms.

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