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this is absolutely true, if maybe a little misleading by saying "peacetime." the reagan years saw an unprecedented "peactime" military buildup in an attempt to end the cold war (or maybe just scare the soviets shitless, who knows), and foreign entanglements in the middle east and south america. all very costly. i think if you disregard his outrageous military spending (hard to do because you shouldn't), however, we would've been close to balanced, if not a surplus.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year1986_0.html
here is a page with federal spending for FY 1986-a year i chose because it was in the meaty part of reagan's second term. the federal deficit was $221 billion; defense spending was over $300 billion. i guarantee we could've cut $200 billion of that and not have suffered a decrease in security, and balanced the budget.
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