Stung by charges that Bill Clinton's $260 billion 1993 tax increase was the largest in U.S. history, the White House is fighting back by charging that the 1982 Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (Tefra) -- guided through the Senate by Bob Dole -- was bigger.

But economists assert (Tefra) did not result in higher taxes.

• Tefra's real impact was to reduce the amount of tax relief resulting from the tax cut President Reagan pushed through Congress in 1981.

• The 1981 cut was three times larger than the 1982 Tefra bill, according to figures from the Joint Committee on Taxation.

• Over the five year period between 1982 and 1986, the economy received more than $500 billion in tax relief -- measured on a static basis.

• Nevertheless the so-called "supply side" predictions came true as tax revenues nearly doubled in the 1980s, due to the economically stimulative effects of the 1981 cuts.

The segment of the program which effected a 10 percent across-the-board cut in 1982 was significantly larger than the revenue raisers included in Tefra for that year. By contrast, there were no mitigating circumstances to the 1993 Clinton tax increase. It was simply a tax hike.

Even Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY) called the Clinton increase "the largest tax increase in the history of public finance in the United States or anywhere else in the world."

Source: Daniel J. Mitchell (Heritage Foundation), "The Biggest Tax Increase. Period." Wall Street Journal, September 10, 1996.