He had to, because all those tax cuts to the rich were costing lots of money, so social programs needed to be cut. The rich do not have to pay off the debt, because the rich don't pay taxes anymore. The 80s had many travesties, like what Reagan did in El Salvador, which was the slaughter of thousands of innocent villagers, paid by the U.S. anti-Communist fund. For some reason, it always escapes people that there may be ways to protect the people's liberty without slaughtering them. They say we support facist dictators to maintain democracy and fight communism, but in reality, we keep facists in power who allow us to extort resources from a country without permission of the people.
Lets go further back in time, to the Vietnam War.
Mainly because Ho Chi Min was elected democratically by the Vietnamese people. The U.S. signed a U.N. resolution to respect the election of the people. Ho Chi Min asked China for help, and thus, communism spread to Vietnam because of the United States. Democracy lost in Vietnam, in the name of American imperialism. Well, the Pentagon needs the people to believe that a permanent war time budget is necessary, so we need a permanent enemy.