On the June 9 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity echoed numerous other media outlets in overstating the magnitude of the economic growth that occurred under former President Ronald Reagan, asserting that it was “the greatest period of peacetime economic growth in history.”

As Media Matters for America noted on June 9, while it is true that -- at the time -- the economic expansion that began during Reagan's presidency was the “longest peacetime” expansion, it has since been surpassed by the expansion that began in March 1991 and ended in March 2001.

The economic growth from February 1961 to December 1969 also surpassed the Reagan-era expansion but partially occurred during the Vietnam War. Hannity's “peacetime” qualifier is significant, because there were only two “peacetime” periods that lasted for more than five years between the end of World War II and the end of the Reagan-expansion era.

From a discussion of Reagan's economic policies with Townhall.com Conservative Columnist Jack Kemp, former Republican member of Congress and former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, on the June 9 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: [H]e [Reagan] dropped the top marginal rates from 70 to 28 percent.

And lo and behold, we doubled revenues to the government, and we unleashed a recovery the likes of which we've never seen before, the greatest period of peacetime economic growth in history.