Mr. Historian, Tear Down This President

The war on Reagan continues.

The death of Ronald Reagan wasn't just an occasion for his admirers to reminisce about his life and accomplishments. It was also an occasion for his detractors to try to tear him down. In many cases, they have been aided and abetted by reporters who failed to do their homework and repeated old myths about Reagan's economic program that are demonstrably untrue.

One of these myths is that Reagan sold the country a bill of goods with his 1981 tax cut, promising that it would lose no revenue. Business Week, among others, repeated this myth in its June 21 issue. "Reagan and his supply-side advisers," it said, "believed that big tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating higher tax revenues through greater economic growth."

This is simply nonsense. No one in a position of authority in the Reagan administration ever said that the tax cut would pay for itself. The proposal that the White House sent to Capitol Hill on Feb. 18, 1981, clearly shows that it expected revenues to decline significantly.