From FDR’s New Deal to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the United States government has attempted to centralize extensive social policies. In the early eighties, when recession and inflation were at a high, Ronald Reagan took office and pronounced that the federal government needed to take a lesser role in the lives of the American people. As Theda Skocpol comments in her book Boomerang: Clinton’s Health Security Effort and the Turn Against Government …showed first 75 words of 848 total…

…showed last 75 words of 848 total…Congress in 2000, such a highly bureaucratic and federally complicated bill does not seem likely in the near future. Furthermore, with the budget surplus causing political gridlock, it is apparent that the democrats will not be able to use the economic surplus for any new government programs. In a time of economic prosperity, where the mailman has four televisions in his three-story house, the American public would rather invest in the stock market than big government.