Politics & Power Quote by Ronald Reagan

Reagan turns a budget argument into a ghost story: once you summon a federal program, it haunts the living forever. The line works because it’s framed as a law of nature, not a partisan preference. “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself” isn’t just a complaint; it’s a diagnosis of institutional self-preservation, delivered with the certainty of gravity. Then he sharpens the knife with absolutes - “never disappear” - before landing the punchline: the bureaucracy as “eternal life,” a joke that flatters the audience’s suspicion while making the target sound almost mythic, beyond reform.

The intent is political and psychological. Reagan isn’t merely advocating cuts; he’s trying to preempt the usual defenses of programs (need, fairness, outcomes) by shifting the debate to permanence. If government only grows, then every “temporary” fix becomes a quiet constitutional change. That subtext matters in the late-1970s/1980s conservative project: rolling back Great Society liberalism, deregulating, and re-centering faith in markets and local control. He’s telling voters that the real cost isn’t this year’s taxes; it’s the irreversible expansion of the state.

There’s also a strategic absolution baked in. By portraying bureaucracy as immortal, he recasts retrenchment as an act of courage against an almost supernatural force, not a choice with trade-offs. The line compresses a whole worldview: government isn’t a tool to be tuned; it’s a creature that feeds, reproduces, and resists death. It’s memorable because it’s funny, but it sticks because it makes skepticism feel like common sense.