The Missing Linc Misses Some History

A day or two ago we blasted Lincoln Chafee for opposing the President’s tax cut proposal on the theory that raising taxes is good for the economy. The Linc said:
“…when President Clinton came in, .. he did raise revenues, he did address the revenue side of our budget and the economy took off. And then when this administration came in, they had big tax cuts in the spring of 2000 and the economy has been faltering…”
Reader Clark Erwin points out that we could have jumped on the Missing Linc harder than we did:
“1. The economy was already growing when the lamentable Clinton crowd reached Washington. The business-cycle dating arbiters of the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) say the 1990-91 recession ended in March 1991 and the expansion began at that time — a year and a half before the nauguration of Sen. Chafee’s supposed revenue raiser.
“2. ‘This administration’ didn’t have a big tax cut in spring 2000. G.W. Bush wasn’t inaugurated until January 2001. And with its phase-in provisions, the cut wasn’t that big.
“3. In what Sen. Chafee is no doubt pleased to call his mind, the Reagan tax cuts probably had nothing to do with the creation of 18 million new jobs in the 1980s…”
It is really remarkable that a United States Senator can have such a shaky grasp of history–not ancient history, but events of the last few years.