On January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan was elected the fortieth president of the United States and proceeded to serve two extremely successful terms in office. He was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and had a successful career in film and television. He has been widely recognized as one of the greatest American Presidents and the main inspiration for the conservative movement from the 1970s to the present day.
Reagan burst onto to the political scene in 1966 when he won the race for California governor by nearly one million votes. He served as governor for the next eight years making massive changes to the California welfare and education system. In his first year as governor, he agreed to a large tax increase to close the budget deficit he inherited when spending cuts alone were insufficient to balance the budget. Reagan opposed President Richard Nixon’s plan to federalize welfare and establish a guaranteed annual income and was the only governor who opposed a National Governors Association resolution in favor of Nixon’s proposal. Reagan’s 1970 welfare reform plan became the 1990s blueprint for the widespread and successful state-based welfare reform experiments that culminated in sweeping welfare reform on the national level in 1996. After Nixon’s plan was defeated in Congress, Reagan embarked on his own welfare plan in California, as California was confronting a welfare crisis. California’s welfare rolls were growing by 40,000 a month by 1970. While California had 10 percent of the nation’s population, it had 16 percent of the nation’s total welfare caseload. Unless something was done, Reagan’s finance department told him, a tax increase would be necessary to meet the added fiscal burden.
His massive defense buildup forced the Soviets to confront their crumbling financial base. He rejected the legitimacy of Communism and in the Reagan Doctrine systematically challenged