I’m not sure what the prerequisites were for inclusion on the congressional supercommittee, but it looks like brainpower wasn’t one of them. Rep. Fred Upton purports to believe that taxing the rich discourages job creation. However, Upton drew a blank when asked by Al Hunt of Bloomberg News to explain why the employment picture was better under Bill Clinton than under George W. Bush, who pushed through generous tax cuts for the rich:

HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know –

HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can – I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job – we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.

Right. This guy’s handlers should know better than to allow him to speak without a teleprompter.