Why do republicans keep talking about reagan cutting spending and reducing government, when numbers show just the opposite?

Perhaps from the way numbers are looked at,

Perhaps from the way numbers are looked at,

So do you think facts have become useless? Seems they can be used to prove anything.

Take away the increases in military spending and then recalculate. His policies created a new paradigm and reversed years of New Deal /Great Society excessive spending .Unfortunately he had Democrat majorities in the Houses of Congress to deal with and they hold the purse strings.

So Tom, excessive spending, if it meets your approval is OK?

There was nothing excessive about the military build up .it was long overdue and it helped end the cold war.

I think your question is basically incorrect in that Reagan cut spending; he couldn't. Year after year, the Reagan Budget went to capitol hill and was pronounced by Dems and the media elites (Tom Donaldson) as "Dead on Arrival". What Reagan was able to do with bipartisan support was cut taxes which led to the boom years from 1983 to the present. All the hoopla about the good times under Clinton were just the repercussions of the Reagan tax cuts; notwithstanding Clinton et al. additional, extensive tax cuts were approved by Congress (and Clinton) in 1995, which boosted the economy even further. The day when the American government employs fewer people may be too horrible to contemplate because there is no political party with the forsight to implement such a plan. They refuse to deal with social security, much less real cuts in the federal payroll.