The meaning of ‘limited’

Re “Don’t look to the Gipper,” Opinion, Oct. 28

Kudos to William Voegeli for his revealing discussion regarding Ronald Reagan as no model for limited government. Presidents -- “Reaganite” or not -- all seem fond of financing projects with debt rather than paying as they go by raising taxes. It’d be interesting to see a chart that illustrates the growth in national debt over presidential administrations.

If government should learn one essential fact, it is not to borrow to spend. All those projects and wars so popular with government leaders should be paid for by taxes, not deferred so our grandchildren will be required to pay interest on interest. One way or another, someone has to pay. The first President Bush had a name for it: voodoo economics.

Joseph A. Strapac

Bellflower

Voegeli misinterprets Reagan’s 1981 vision and legacy of “limited government” by his conclusion that bigger federal budgets are a measure of an expanding federal government. In the 1980s, the term “big government” meant the usurping of states rights, particularly in the West. Reagan sought to limit the federal government’s influence over individual states, thus the term “limited government.” Most Americans knew going in that federal spending was going to rise in light of Reagan’s power projection to finally end the Cold War, and that worked.

Oddly enough, Voegeli cites the portion of the 1981 inaugural address in which Reagan defines what he meant by limited government: “It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people.”

David Coffin

Westchester

Voegeli writes: “One of the staples of public-opinion studies is that Americans are ‘ideologically conservative’ but ‘operationally liberal.’ We dislike big government in general, but particular constituencies are always eager to defend and are happy to expand programs that benefit them.” Wouldn’t it be simpler -- and more grammatically conservative -- to simply say that conservatives are hypocritical?

Christopher Dill

Los Angeles