You might wonder how creating a crazily expensive new weapons system squared with Reagan’s inaugural pronouncement “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Once Reagan got to the White House, he decided government was the solution to a shit ton of problems: big ones, like how to monstrously increase the military arsenal of the United States, and small ones, like how to illegally increase the military arsenal of the Nicaraguan Contras. Despite his reputation as a deficit hawk, he added more to the national debt than all previous presidents combined:
