Jim Pattison Group owner Jim Pattison spent the weekend in Los Angeles celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan – a man who, he told Business in Vancouver, is “one of the special presidents of the United States.”
Pattison attended the late president’s funeral in 2004 and is a trustee of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
“Reagan, along with [former Soviet Union president Mikhail] Gorbachev, changed the world – certainly the world I lived in,” Pattison told BIV on February 4.
Reagan is credited with creating the contemporary Republican Party and is perceived as a tax cutter and fiscal conservative.
While Reagan did cut taxes, he also hiked military spending.
U.S. debt tripled from $712 billion in 1980 to $2 trillion in 1988, when Reagan left office.
Reagan never presented a balanced budget to Congress during his eight years in office.