Answer :
Ronald Reagan "sought to cut the size of the Federal government" and increased defense spending. This was due mostly to the fact that the United States was involved in the Cold War.
Ronald Reagan:
- proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
- greatly increased defense spending
The Federal government's overall size and budget got larger, not smaller, under Reagan. And it was Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR that proposed glasnost and perestroika.
More details about Reagan's defense spending:
When President Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, he took a hard stance toward the Soviet Union. Where previous leaders of the nations had pursued detente and nuclear arms reduction, Reagan spoke of the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" and ramped up American military preparedness. He authorized a program to spend over 200 billion dollars over five years on bombers, cruise missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and more.
Then in 1983, Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was a plan for a space-based missile defense system against any threat of Soviet missiles. Sometimes people referred to Reagan's plan as "Star Wars." More than 200 billion dollars were devoted to the Strategic Defense Initiative over the next four decades after the program was started.
