I listened with interest as a pundit from the left attempted to excoriate the legacy of former President Ronald Reagan on CNN.

Hasn't he heard the old advice, "Don't speak ill of the dead?"

Oh well, just another compassionate liberal, I always say.

It reminded me of the time when Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Some of my liberal colleagues were making jokes about Reagan's "I can't recall" answers during the Iran/Contra hearings.

Yeah, Alzheimer's. That's a real knee-slapper.

Of course liberals can't stand Ronald Reagan. With good reason. He turned piles of Democrats into Republicans.

Reagan made it so the only way a liberal can get elected is if he talks like a conservative.

Take Bill Clinton for example. He will be remembered largely for - not counting the cigar and blue dress - being a champion of tax cuts, balanced budgets and welfare reform. Not exactly what I would call liberal ideals.

But I digress.

This particular liberal pundit was taking swipes at what came to be known as "Reagonomics," a supply-side theory of the economy maintaining that cutting taxes will give incentives to invest, work harder and save more, which thereby will stimulate the economy.

Reagan also believed in the trickle-down theory, which advocates letting businesses flourish, since their profits will ultimately trickle down to lower-income individuals and the rest of the economy.

You can argue on a theoretical scale whether these ideas are valid, but I can tell you from a factual standpoint what happened to the economy and budget during Reagan's years in the White House.

On Dec. 19, 1980, the prime rate reached 21.5 percent. The average prime rate in 1980 was 15.26 percent.

The prime rate is defined by The Wall Street Journal as the base rate on corporate loans posted by at least 75 percent of the nation's 30 largest banks.

Mortgages were in the 13 to 14 percent range.

Inflation was running at 13 percent.

That's the climate when Reagan took office.

His budgets and economic policies were so demonized by Democrats and the media that most people believe the tax cuts he enacted were the cause of the huge deficit amassed during his administration.

But the critics ignore the facts.

During Reagan's presidency, the nation's economic growth rate was a robust 3.9 percent, unemployment dropped from 9.6 percent to 5.3 percent and revenues into the Treasury increased.

In 1983, revenue to the Treasury was $601 billion. In 1989, revenue was $1.1 trillion.

OK. Take a moment here to understand.

Reagan cut taxes. Revenue to the Treasury from taxes increased from $601 billion to $1.1 trillion during his presidency.

It's fact. It's history. It can't be denied.

Those who call supply-side economics voodoo simply ignore those very basic, fundamental facts.

They point out, instead, that the nation's deficit ballooned under Reagan. How true - the deficit was five times greater at the end of Reagan's tenure than at the beginning.

But the deficit was not caused by tax cuts. (Remember, revenue to the Treasury increased.)

No, the deficit was caused by wild spending in Congress.

And to be fair, Reagan was part of the spending problem.

He greatly increased defense spending, largely to bankrupt the Soviet Union as it tried to keep up.

This, of course, led to the eventual demise of that country, the end of the cold war and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

Nonetheless, spending during the Reagan years far outstripped the increase in revenue to the Treasury and there were deficits.

But what was the effect on the economy of those economic policies?

In 1988 the prime rate was 10 percent and inflation fell to a seasonally adjusted 4.4 percent.

Your money was actually worth something again.

Liberals can pooh-pooh Ronald Reagan's economic policies and other accomplishments all they want.

But based on those accomplishments along with his ability to gain consensus, to communicate and to translate vision into reality, I am confident history will place him in the top tier of greatest U.S. presidents. [[In-content Ad]]