With the House and Senate on recess this week and next, and the domestic budget on hold until they return, we were expecting a brief lull in references to “light-switch taxes” and $3,000-per-household increases in energy costs and so on.
Bachmann took to the pages of the Minneapolis Star Tribune to keep the disinformation train chugging along. “According to an analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” Bachmann writes, “the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by $3,128 per year.”
We’ve reported exhaustively on this myth and its persistence, and will continue to do so. We were just hoping for a brief respite from it–but no such luck. The punch line is that one of the MIT study’s authors has come forward very publicly to say just how terribly wrong this talking point is. House Republicans…respectfully disagree.
Perhaps we should applaud Bachmann, though. After all, this phony statistic has circulated throughout the Republican ranks for quite some time. And using a fake statistic as a standard talking point isn’t too bad compared to Bachmann’s other pronouncements about the dangers of re-education camps and replacing the dollar, or the people becoming slaves, or how the country is at the point of revolution. Really, this is one of her tamer moments.
