Reagan’s critics, for their part, saw a redistribution from the poor to the rich. That may have been a long-term consequence, but at first the transfer was not from one social class to another but from one government program to another. The transfers went, according to Niskanen, “from discretionary domestic spending to defense, entitlements and interest payments.” Reagan took money from bridge building, park tidying, and arts funding and used it to pay for a military buildup and the very Great Society programs he had come to office promising to dismantle. That required borrowing.
