US Presidency
1984

By nearly every measure, the position of poor Americans worsened under the leadership of our opponents. Teenage drug use, out-of wedlock births, and crime increased dramatically. Urban neighborhoods and schools deteriorated. Those whom government intended to help discovered a cycle of dependency that could not be broken. Government became a drug, providing temporary relief, but addiction as well. And let's get some facts on the table that our opponents don't want to hear. The biggest annual increase in poverty took place between 1978 and 1981, over 9 percent each year, in the first two years of our administration. Well, I should, pardon me, I didn't put a period in there. In the first two years of our administration, that annual increase fell to 5.3 percent. And 1983 was the first year since 1978 that there was no appreciable increase in poverty at all. Pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into programs in order to make people worse off was irrational and unfair.