Lies

Roy Blunt's many, many failures as leader of the House Republican's Health Care Solutions Group may be a key reason why he's not one of the nine House Republicans attending today's health care summit at the Blair House. 

Instead, Blunt has been named to the Junior Varsity "Truth" Squad by Minority Leader John Boehner.  Choosing Blunt choice to be part of anything approximating a "Truth Squad" on health care matters is....um... ironic.

• Blunt Receives Coveted "Pants On Fire" Award From PolitiFact.com
• Blunt Assessment: "Some of what he knows just isn’t true"
• Roy Blunt On Death Panels: "It's Easy for That Debate to Go Either Way"
• After months of research, Blunt still woefully misinformed about Missourians' health care struggles
• Even The Mind-Numbingly Dumb Talking Points Are Wrong
• Blunt Fibs Again About His Health Care Record
• What Roy Blunt Used To Think About Long, Complicated Health Care Bills
• Large Majorities Dismiss GOP Attacks On Health Care As "Scare Tactics"
• Blunt Stands By False Claim That Undocumented Immigrants Will Receive Benefits in President's Proposals
• Blunt Assessment: "Astonishing Inaccuracy"
• Roy Blunt: "Medicare has never done anything to make people more healthy"
• Roy Blunt: It would have been "best" if Medicare and Medicaid never existed
• Blunt: My Four-Page Memo is "Actually Much More Detailed" Than Other Health Care Proposals

 Jason Noble has the amusing and frustrating story over at the Prime Buzz of Rep. Chuck Gatschenberger (R-Lake St. Louis) using big boy words in a recent constituent newsletter about federal health care reform legislation. Here's an excerpt, as posted by Noble:

House Budget Chair and candidate for State Auditor Allen Icet apparently missed all those audits of the "death panel" falsehood -- Saturday, he said they're real.

Icet also attacked the federal health care bill working its way through Congress: "However you want to put lipstick on this pig, it will destroy our country," Icet said. And, he added, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was right: "We will have what she referred to as death panels."

Palin and Icet, of course, are wrong (very wrong).  But why would a man entrusted by the House GOP with the state budget and seeking a promotion to statewide office be expected to know what he's talking about?

Peter Kinder still can't be bothered to use reasonable, correct estimates for how expanded Medicaid requirements will impact the state. The News-Leader (empahsis added):

On Dec. 30, Kinder sent a letter to Nixon, expressing his concern about the federal legislation and calling on the governor to state his position on the legislation.

Kinder's claim that the Medicaid expansion could cost Missouri taxpayers "as high as $450 million per year" is much higher than what Nixon's Department of Social Services claims the House or Senate bills would cost Missouri.

DSS officials estimate the House version of Medicaid expansion would cost the state of Missouri $188 million more each year, while the Senate bill would cost state taxpayers an extra $91 million each year.

Roy Blunt in today's News-Leader:

Before addressing the attacks on me that were obviously designed to help the liberal candidate in the U.S. Senate race, permit me to make a general point about the economic and energy policies of the one-party Congress directed by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

If the League of Conservation Voters' "Stain" ad is "obviously designed to help" Robin Carnahan's Senate campaign, then Roy Blunt's response mail piece was "obviously designed" to help him in the U.S. Senate race. 

Obviously.

 Undeterred by last week's "Lie of the Year" announcement, Cynthia Davis is telling her constituents that exterminating unspecified "undesirables" is a central goal of Congressional health care reform.

The congressional plan will save money by “weeding out the undesirables”. That’s why they fought to make sure abortion was covered in the senate bill. When we go to a national healthcare system, the first step is for government to gain greater control of our lives. The second step will be to define who is worthy of medical services. Even if you think it is okay for parents to destroy their offspring before birth, we ought to be concerned about what will happen to the disabled and elderly.

It's comforting to know that no amount of ridiculous behavior from Davis will jeopardize her leadership position with the House GOP Caucus.

PolitiFact's Lie of the Year:

Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

"Death panels."

The "death panels" phrase was created by Sarah Palin, but has its roots in the coordinated campaign to scare voters with the idea that Democratic health care proposals would create mechanisms for euthanizing elderly or sickly persons. It was outrageous and obviously false – that's what it's the "Lie of the Year" – but that didn't stop leading Missouri Republicans from helping to spread the lies.

Notable Show-Me State propagators of the Lie of the Year include:

• Rep. Roy Blunt, who said it's "easy" for the death panel debate "to go either way." Blunt repugnantly refused to smack down the falsehood on KTRS in August. "I think it's easy for that debate to go either way," he said. "You know, when they start talking about doing this every five years, then you do begin to wonder, now, just how committed is the federal government to being sure that that decision's already been made by you well before you and your family face it." 

Sen. Kit Bond doesn't like the idea of allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gasses, and supports a resolution by Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (R-AK) to stop the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to rein in emissions.

In fact, Bond hates a recent ruling allowing the EPA to reduce emmisions so much that he's telling folks the EPA just might "starve" Missourians. Listen to this clip from his weekly radio show (via The Hill):

"I think nobody wants to see a bureaucracy that is focused on the east coast and the left coast tell us how we live, or pay higher taxes and starve in the midwest," he said. 

It's not every day that U.S. Senators talk about how the federal government may "starve" Midwesterners so the "east coast and the left coast" might live -- but if it's coming from Kit Bond, it's got to be a completely reasonable statement.

Lt. Governor Peter Kinder posted a letter to Sen. McCaskill today on his campaign blog demanding an "explanation" for her support of health care legislation to expand access to affordable health care for Missourians.  Predictably, Kinder's letter is light on the facts:

The plan being proposed by your colleagues in the Senate could cost Missouri an additional $400 million more each year. That is money we just don't have, as you and Gov. Jay Nixon are aware...

We now know that you support the plan crafted by liberal politicians. On top of cap and trade, the takeover of America's auto manufacturers and a failed "stimulus plan," this government-funded health care plan is one more program that would hurt Missouri taxpayers, Missouri small businesses and would bankrupt our state.

This is false.

I don't disagree with the thrust of this editorial in the Post-Dispatch about Republican fearmongering in the health care debate.

What campfires are to spooky ghost stories, Congressional Republicans have become to frightening, fabricated urban legends about health care reform. Death panels! Rationing! Medicare cuts!

But at the same time, I don't understand why the editorial is accompanied by a photo of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and mentions Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) –- but doesn't note a single Missouri leader guilty of the same scare tactics. 

Rep. Sam Graves is featured in this new web ad from the DNC, and Rep. Jo Ann Emerson also has a cameo behind the shoulder of some dude from Kentucky.

A short dispatch from The Star's Steve Kraske, posted here in full:

How false stories get spread

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, tweeted today that President Obama told ABC that jail time is appropriate punishment for not buying health insurance.

Except that Obama didn't say that.

The Lieutenant Governor could do himself a favor by setting Twitter aside for a few days/months/years.

From the folks who fact-checked Roy Blunt when he tried to frighten seniors with the same bogus story:

We don’t know what Mr. Akin was reading, but it’s a safe bet it wasn’t the Post-Dispatch.If he had, he’d have known better than to use that line.

As we pointed out when U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Springfield, made the same claim (but with a different age - 59) in a meeting with Post-Dispatch editors and reporters on Aug. 12, that’s not even close to the truth...

The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen weighs in on Todd Akin's hip replacement whopper:

[Akin's statement] is comically wrong, and it's been debunked over and over again. For one thing, the comparison itself is nonsensical, since Democrats aren't proposing a Canadian-style system.

But more important is the fact that seniors in Canada get hip-replacement surgeries all the time: "'At least 63 percent of hip replacements performed in Canada last year...were on patients age 65 or older.' In 2006-2007, an additional 1,577 hip replacement surgeries were performed in Canada on patients over 85."

As it turns out, just a few months ago, Rep. Roy Blunt, Akin's fellow Missouri Republican, made the identical claim. When it was proven false, Blunt walked it back and vowed not to repeat the bogus claim again.

If only Todd Akin paid closer attention.

The DNC has a new web video today focusing on a few of Michael Steele's more preposterous claims about the health care debate.

I still find it incredible that Steele would say that he hasn't tried to "scare people with sound bites," and he doesn't know any GOP leaders in the House or Senate that have done that.