Julie King's List: AP US History Presidents Assignment

• secretly selling
• Iran-contra affair
• most damaging
• arms to Iran
• had not been informed
• profits possibly going to the guerrillas in Nicaragua
• exchange for hostages
• “personal management style” had prevented him from controlling his subordinates
• signed an anti-nuke deal
• Strategic Defense Initiative
• contributed to continuing tensions
• historic treaty in Washington that would eliminate their intermediate-range  nuclear forces
• assist anti-Communist guerrillas, known as contras, in thwarting alleged  Soviet-Cuban inroads into Nicaragua and to pressure the Sandinista government to  hold elections and negotiate with its neighbors
• overthrow the Sandinistas
• after a 1988 cease-fire, this objective appeared unrealistic.
• Ignored ICJ ruling against mining Nicaraguan harbors
• law. The
• refused in advance to recognize the court’s jurisdiction
• amounts to an intervention of one state in he internal affairs of the other.”
• Limit UN role; withdrew from UNESCO
• withdrew from UNESCO, cut off America’s contribution to the UN Fund for  Population Activities, cast the single vote against a World Health Organization  code for infant formula, and did not oppose the Kassebaum amendment reducing  America’s contribution to the General Assembly by 25% unless the UN should amend  its charter.
• encouraged Britain’s withdrawal from UNESCO (the objective of a Heritage  Foundation campaign), and threatened its own withdrawal from several other  international agencies.
• refused to recognize the Court’s jurisdiction

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• transform the nation's economic policies
• three-year, 30-percent reduction in both individual and corporate income tax  rates—the biggest single tax reduction in American history
• affected people in all income groups; but the greatest beneficiaries were people  in the highest brackets—those who, according to the supply-siders, would be most  likely to use the surplus income to invest in the economy
• Congress approved the president's proposal in late July 1981, after lowering the  reduction slightly, to 25 percent.
• stimulate economic growth much more effectively than the traditional liberal  approach of increasing government spending.
• increased spending too
• proposed an enormous increase in the military budget ($1.5 trillion over five  years) to rebuild armed forces that he claimed had been allowed to deteriorate  badly in the 1970s
• later scaled back significantly
• make substantial cuts in domestic spending.
• squeeze more than $41 billion out of the government's nonmilitary  "discretionary" spending
• not willing to make any significant changes in spending on Social Security,  Medicare, and several other broad-based programs
• the bulk of the cuts Stockman proposed came from these programs.
• increased the already tight spending restrictions on Medicaid, the major program  of medical assistance for the poor, which the federal government financed  jointly with the states
• reduced federal subsidies for low-income housing, cut spending on food stamps,  reduced federal aid to education and federal contributions to state governments,  and placed new restrictions on Aid to Families with Dependent Children
• substantially reduced spending on government itself—forcing staff and service  cuts in almost all departments and agencies. In some cases, the cutbacks  eliminated the waste and inefficiency that Reagan argued was characteristic of  many government programs. In other cases, they impaired the ability of agencies  to function effectively and contributed to the growing popular belief that  government could not be trusted to do anything well.
• president's effective television addresses to the nation, which aroused  groundswells of popular support for his proposals.
• committed to reducing the role of government in American economic life.  Deregulation, an idea many Democrats had begun to embrace in the Carter years,  became the religion of the Reagan administration
• Sagebrush Rebellion, a movement among western conservatives to fight federal  environmental regulations, which they believed had a particularly devastating  effect on their region's economy.
• Watt opened up public lands and water to development and tried to ease other  restrictions on the private use of public lands. The Environmental Protection  Agency (before its directors were indicted for corruption) relaxed or entirely  eliminated enforcement of critical environmental laws and regulations. The Civil  Rights Division of the Justice Department eased enforcement of civil rights  laws. The Department of Transportation slowed implementation of new rules  limiting automobile emissions and imposing new safety standards on cars and  trucks. By getting government "out of the way," Reagan officials promised, they  were helping to ensure economic revival.
• named more than half of all the federal judges in the nation and three justices  of the Supreme Court, among them Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman ever  appointed. Reagan's court appointments, like his appointments to regulatory  agencies, had the effect of reversing many of the judicial trends that had been  gathering force for over twenty years.
• set about limiting the effect of some of the decisions of the Warren Court in  the 1960s—tempering the strict protections of criminal rights, softening some  civil rights measures, and perhaps most notably, weakening (although never  eliminating) the right to abortion established by the Supreme Court's 1973  decision in Roe v. Wade .
• seldom as radical as his rhetoric (and never as radical as the agenda of the  militantly conservative Republican Congress of the mid-1990s).
• the achievements of Reagan's first term represented a significant shift in the  direction of public policy. That was visible above all in the administration's  economic policies.
• shaping its fiscal policy (its taxing and spending) to promote investment more  than consumption and to reduce the tax and regulatory burden on corporations and  wealthy people.
• attempting to stop the growth of many areas of government and to reduce, at  times even to eliminate, programs that many Americans had come to consider  timeless and unassailable.
• Reaganomics.
• promised not only to reduce taxes and cut spending, but to balance the federal  budget. He never did.
• his policies contributed to the largest budget deficits in American history and  a tripling of the national debt during his eight years in office.

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• economic needs of the nation: unemployment, the runaway deficit, the health care crisis, and welfare reform.
• health care reform,
• secure adoption of an economic package that combined tax increases (which fell mainly on the upper class) and spending cuts (which hurt mainly impoverished Americans).
• economic
• lowered
• the deficit from $290 billion in 1992 to $203 billion by 1994
• 1996, Congress passed a sweeping reform bill, fulfilling Clinton's 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it." The legislation replaced the long standing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a system of block grants to individual states. It also dropped the eligibility of legal immigrants for welfare assistance during the first five years of their residency. Clinton also won an increase in the minimum wage to $5.15 per hour. At the same time, the President blocked Republican attempts to bar public education to children of illegal immigrants.
• d also vowed to end the exclusion of homosexuals from military service. A federal court ruling just days after Clinton's election moved that controversial topic onto the public agenda, where it was difficult for the President to set it aside until a more convenient time.

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• sustained inflations
• distorts our economic decisions
•  Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, causing human misery  and personal indignity
• denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful  achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.
• tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending
• mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience  of the present
• we are going to begin to act, beginning today.
• government is not the solution to our problem
• The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a  higher price.
• Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long  neglected.
• "We the people," this breed called Americans.
• healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunity for all  Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.
• putting all Americans back to work.
• freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs
• idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength,
• reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the  consent of the governed.
• 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

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• nant, and opposing, forces, Reagan shared the view that communism posed a legitimate threat to free people everywhere. His anti-Communist outlook ha

• As part of the policies that became known as the "Reagan Doctrine," the United States also offered financial and logistics support to the anti-communist opposition in central Europe
• increasingly hard line against socialist and communist governments in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua