Should the Govt. Buy Reagan’s Boyhood Home?

There was a time when having the Park Service purchase the former home of a revered president to maintain as a memorial would be nothing more than business as usual. But the winds of change and government restraint are still blowing across the land and old practices are getting a fresh look. This is particularly true when the president in question was one who championed limiting the grasp of government and restraint in spending. The focus of this question is the future of Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home.

Nearly a decade after Congress told the National Park Service to try to buy Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home, the plan remains in limbo — the victim of a budget dispute and of the former president’s own limited-government philosophy.

The Dixon, Ill., house is one of a number of places where the country’s 40th president lived when he called the small town on the Rock River, 100 miles from Chicago, his home from 1920 through 1933. But it’s the one that has been preserved for the past three decades by a nonprofit foundation as the official boyhood home, and it’s also the most likely candidate for the Park Service to incorporate.

Or it would be, if Reagan — whose 100th birthday Sunday will kick off a yearlong national commemoration of the nation’s 40th president — hadn’t preached a limited-government, free-market philosophy that his supporters say makes a government takeover unthinkable.

Everyone from Grover Norquist and Dennis Hastert to members of Reagan’s family have been chiming in on this as the proposal has remained stalled for years. The debate seems more about symbolism and message than dollars and cents.

On the one hand, plenty of presidents are already honored in this fashion, and the list includes the likes of Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover. Surely, the argument goes, the Gipper deserves the same – if not greater – feting. Further, we’re not talking about a budget busting amount of cash here. Figures range from 300 to 700 thousand, or perhaps a million. We spent three times that much to build an under-the-road turtle tunnel in Lake Jackson, Florida.

But opponents argue this is precisely the opposite message from what Reagan’s legacy should symbolize. The house is currently under the care of a non-profit foundation run by private citizens which seems well situated to care for the property now. (And if they ran into financial difficulty in the future, do you really think they would have trouble finding donors around the nation to maintain Reagan’s home to the tune of a few hundred grand?) Also, no matter the amount, should we be encouraging any outlay of taxpayer funds for something like this while we struggle to trim every last penny from the government’s bloated budget?

I tend to agree with one of the critics quoted, who asked what Reagan himself would think of the proposal were he with us today. Would he support having the government grab up more private land simply to promote his memory? Would Reagan favor the spending of taxpayer dollars on this while the national debt continues to spiral out of control? Or would he lean more toward a solution by private citizens which relied on the kindness of good hearted supporters?

When it’s put that way it really doesn’t sound like a tough call. Perhaps this is the time to be looking at moving those other presidential homes off the taxpayer tab and into the hands of private groups with a vested interested in maintaining their legacy.