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Tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) says that former Republican President Ronald Reagan is responsible for the country's economic success under former Democratic President Bill Clinton and the American people "don't really understand" economic growth.

Johnson told CNN host Soledad O'Brien on Tuesday that it would not be necessary to raise tax rates on the top 2 percent of earners because the country could collect "$750 billion of added revenue through economic growth" without changing tax rates or closing loopholes if the economy continues to recover.

O'Brien noted that the Republican Party was in the tenuous position of opposing the will of the majority of Americans who would like to see tax rates go up on the wealthiest.

"I would imagine that 98 percent of the American population would be in favor of that because we haven't made the case for economic growth," Johnson explained. "The American people really doesn't understand that economic growth is ten times more effective."

Democratic analyst Bob Shrum pointed out that Johnson's assertion that higher tax rates on top earners hurt economic growth was faulty because "under Bill Clinton, we had taxes at 39.6 percent and we created 22 million new jobs. We cut [tax rates] under George Bush and we had almost no net job creation."

"Why do you guys keep making the argument that low taxes for the richest people in the country are the key to job creation when history refutes that?" Shrum wondered.

"We could go do a history lesson, but I would argue that Clinton's economic recovery really dates back to Ronald Reagan," Johnson declared. "He cut rates 28 percent. Listen, I started my business in the '80s, so did Apple, so did Microsoft. Those businesses came to fruition in the '90s. And President Clinton, together with the peace dividend -- also produced by Ronald Reagan -- that's what created that economic engine."

In fact, Apple, Microsoft and Johnson's company, Pacur LLC, were all founded in the 1970s during the administrations of former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

The Wisconsin Republican continued by insisting that he would have to see cuts to Obama's health care reform law, Medicare and Social Security before he would even consider raising tax rates on the rich.

"The other problem that is holding our economy back is the explosion of regulations," he added. "And I don't see that we're going to reform these agencies -- the way that you reform them is there you actually cut their budgets because that will force them to focus on the most important parts of the economy to have effective regulations. So, I'd go after the agencies, I would put structural reform to save -- and that's the important point -- to save Social Security and Medicare. And we've got to address this health care law because it is a disaster."

"This is Fantasy Land," Shrum shot back. "It's like saying Ronald Reagan invented the Apple iPad. It's crazy. Obamacare is not going to be on the table."

"Here's the bottom line: President Obama, show us your plan," Johnson concluded.

"He gave you a plan," Shrum quipped. "And his plan is not to repeal Obamacare. Not going to happen. You lost the election, buddy."

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Rachel Maddow took The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore to task over his praise of Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and how they were supposedly so wonderful for America. As Rachel pointed out, they were great alright, if you were rich.

MAHER: Here's the part of Ronald Reagan I'm not so crazy about. There's a few things I'm not so crazy about. He introduced the religious right into politics...

MOORE: And turned around the US economy.

MAHER: Uh... okay. Well you know what, David Stockman says this:

The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago [Ronald Reagan], of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts.

Which George Bush the first called “Voodoo Economics”. It's still with us. Now what do you say to your fellow Republicans here...

MOORE: I'd say the Reagan tax cuts were the greatest economic policy of the last fifty years. They caused about a twenty year expansion...

MAHER: Okay but what (crosstalk). How could we afford the tax cuts that Obama and the Republicans just agreed on in December? How is that a good thing when...

MOORE: It's a good thing because we have to have the lowest tax rates in the world if we want to compete. I mean all the people in this audience will have jobs (crosstalk) if we have a pro-business, pro-competitive environment.

While Stephen Moore continually talked over her, Rachel Maddow attempted to explain how the deficit skyrocketed and that we had some of the worst income inequality in decades due to Reagan's policies. She'd finally had enough of him interrupting her and stood up to say this.

MADDOW: From 1980 until 1990, the top 1% saw their income go up by roughly 80%. The median wage in the country over ten years went up 3%. That means for the people who are best off on the country, it was the Matterhorn and for everybody else in the country, it was like this. (crosstalk) So if you were rich, Reagan was awesome. And if you were anybody else, it sucked.

David Stockman wrapped it up with pointing out how completely irresponsible the Republicans have been when it comes to spending. And Maher pointed out that their true strategy is to “starve the beast”.

For more on just how wonderfully trickle-down economics worked for most of us, here are a few articles.

Income inequality

Some thoughts -- and graphs -- on inequality and income

The United States of Inequality

And there are a couple of good articles on measuring income and a break down as to what some of the charts on income out there tell us here and here.

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Looks like Saturday Night Live is getting in on the act with going after President Obama for caving and making deals with Republicans who insisted on keeping their tax cuts for the rich no matter how badly our economy might suffer for it. SNL had him claiming he was literally taken hostage for three days by the Republicans, saying he now suffers from Stockholm Syndrome and praising tax cuts for the rich as the "best part of the bill" after seeing the error of his ways in captivity.

They then had him quoting Rush Limbaugh on job creation, knocking "San Francisco Nancy" Pelosi and saying the voters "overwhelmingly rejected Democrats and their San Francisco values and their class warfare politics."

They finished up with having him defend Bristol Palin and her loss on Dancing with the Stars, saying he'd be joining Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly on tour and finally going full birther on himself.

It might have been funny if it weren't so pitifully close to the truth and if Fred Armisen could do a decent Obama impersonation. That and Saturday Night Live desperately needing some better writers.

If they actually wanted to go for some laughs, they should have had him calling in Bubba for reinforcements this week.

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Lady McCheney really lives in upside down land. In her world it's "nutty" to imply that deregulation, Wall Street run amok and Goldman Sachs might have anything to do with Greece's problems. Paul Begala needs to do his homework so we don't get the type of lame responses we got from him here, but whatever could have given him the idea that Goldman Sachs might have something to do with Greece's problems? Maybe he read this...

Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis

or this...

Goldman Goes Rogue – Special European Audit To Follow.

Mary Matalin of course repeats the Republican talking point du jour, Greece's problems are all due to their being a "welfare state", thus the United States must eliminate all of our social safety nets to avoid going down that same road. Never, ever, ever think about raising taxes on the rich or reigning in our military industrial complex. The least among us must suck it up and be happy to live in squalor. Paid into Social Security your whole life and thought the government made an agreement with you in good faith to honor that contract... too bad. We spent it throwing away billions of dollars for them to play football with and blow things up in Iraq and Afghanistan and to bail out these financial institutions that weren't regulated. Suck it up losers!

She also threw this backwards land nonsense out there.

BEGALA: I know right here in America, Mary's right, the president who I worked for, Bill Clinton, handed off to the president that Mary worked for, a surplus, and a pathway to zero national debt by this year, we should have zero national debt but for Republican economic policies. I know what caused it here. It was cutting taxes for the rich. Deregulating Wall Street. The Russian roulette with the American people's money that the Wall Street guys were playing and that's what caused this crash in America. I suspect that's probably what's behind the thing overseas, but I don't know.

BLITZER: Mary, I'll give you the final word.

MATALIN: That economy that President Clinton enjoyed was the result of Reaganomics and when we get back to Reaganomics, we will get out of the recession that we're in, and when we got -- when we picked up from the Clinton administration we had a recession, so we can keep going back all the way to the beginning of time, but every president has to deal with what he gets and President Clinton was very lucky to have followed Reaganomics.

Good grief. This woman is just as shameless a liar as her old boss. Hey Begala... go read a little so you can call her out the next time they put you on with her, would you? We all know Blitzer's not going to do it. And if you're going to praise your old boss on deficits, that's fine but you also need to own up to his part in deregulating these markets if we're going to have any honest discussion on it. That was a bipartisan screw up of massive proportions and there are still too few willing to really fix the mess now on all sides.