Yeah, no. When Lifeline was started cell phones hardly existed, and the program itself didn’t take off until Bill Clinton vastly expanded it in 1996. Anyone with two functioning brain cells knows Reagan would not approve of how it morphed from a little known government program into the giant mess it is today.

Via The Hill:

Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn forcefully defended her agency’s phone subsidy program for the poor in a speech on Thursday.

Conservative critics have claimed the FCC’s Lifeline program is a wasteful government handout and referred to it as the “Obamaphone program.”

“Here’s the truth. The Lifeline program long predates the current administration,” Clyburn said in the speech at the New America Foundation. “It was actually created during the Reagan administration, so let’s give credit where credit is due. The Lifeline program is a legacy President Reagan could be proud of.”

Congress first enacted the Lifeline program in 1985, and the FCC expanded the program to cover cellphone service in 2005 during the George W. Bush administration.

The program pays for phone service, not the phones themselves. But many companies that receive funding through the program offer free and low-cost phones to their subscribers.