Reagan Declares That “Government Is the Problem” (1981)

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The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people, idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity. But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural,

political, and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can by borrowing, live beyond our means. But for only a limited period of time. Why then should we think that collectively as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding. We are going to begin to act, beginning today. The economic ills we suffer of come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months. But they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now as we've had in the past

to do whatever needs to be done, to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. From time to time, we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. We hear much of special interest groups.

Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick. Professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, We the People. This breed called Americans.

Reagan Declares That “Government Is the Problem” (1981)

Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory in 1980 marked a new epoch in American political history. Reagan won 44 states and Jimmy Carter won fewer electoral votes than any sitting president since Herbert Hoover. Reagan succeeded by tying together different strands of an emerging Republican coalition: social conservatives concerned by what they saw as the erosion of moral behavior; fiscal conservatives who desired reduced spending and taxation; foreign policy hawks seeking a muscular foreign policy; and “law and order” advocates who wanted a tougher approach to crime. Reagan’s charismatic persona undoubtedly helped him as well, and he had a knack for delivering the pithy one-liner. One of Reagan’s most famous turns of phrase comes from this inauguration speech, in which he declared that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” In this excerpt, Reagan makes the case for lower government spending and taxation, which he contends would bring economic prosperity and protect the freedom of the American people.

Ronald Reagan Inaugural Speech, 1981 | Iowa Public Television | January 20, 1981 This video clip and associated transcript appear from 3:46 - 7:36 in the full record.

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