1115.org

When I see Republicans repeating “facts” that are in fact not true — how tax cuts increase tax revenue, for example — it’s never been entirely clear to me whether they actually believe what they are saying, or whether they are saying it even though they know it isn’t true.

While we can’t generalize from a sample of one, it’s clear that Mike Pence, the third ranking Republican in the House, was confident the crap he believed is true. Here’s Spence, being interviewed on CSPAN’s Washington Journal yesterday:

You’re absolutely correct in saying that they saw deficits and the national debt grow under President Reagan, but it was — and check me on this, people can check things easily on the internet these days, check me on this — the rate reductions that President Reagan enacted resulted in more than a doubling of the revenues over the next seven years that went from the American people to the federal government.

Since Spence knows all about checking things on the internet, and since he has a staff that can be asked to do it for him, he might have them fact-check his beliefs before he challenges the media to do so. As ThinkProgress pointed out, this claim was debunked by Media Matters back in September 2005 when Sean Hannity made the same argument:

According to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), when adjusted for inflation to constant fiscal year 2000 dollars, receipts (revenues) increased only from $1.077 trillion to $1.236 trillion during Reagan’s term in office. Even in unadjusted (current) dollars, Hannity’s claim that revenues “doubled” to more than $1 trillion during the Reagan administration is false: From 1981 to 1988, revenues in current dollars increased from $599.3 billion to $909.3 billion.

Spence might make a note to himself that taking things Hannity says to be true is generally fraught with risk. In fact, to save himself future embarrassment, he might want to add Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter to the list. And Dick Cheney.