Missing In Action: Michele Bachmann’s Fact-Checking Team

Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As my colleague Tim Murphy wrote this morning, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) finally got sick of the criticism hurled her way by fellow GOP presidential contender Tim Pawlenty and fired back with an attack of her own. In highlighting the former Minnesota governor’s questionable fiscal record, Tim notes, Bachmann is on the mark. But on the biggest issue on the minds of Americans—jobs and the economy—Bachmann is dead wrong again.

In a Sunday email to supporters, Bachmann says, “Governor Pawlenty said in 2006, ‘The era of small government is over…the government has to be more proactive and more aggressive.’ That’s the same philosophy that, under President Obama, has brought us record deficits, massive unemployment, and an unconstitutional health care plan. [emphasis mine]

Let’s examine this. First, President Obama’s philosophy, and by extension his policies, have not created record deficits here in the United States. As this nifty New York Times graph points out, it was President George W. Bush’s policies—the Bush tax cuts, two unfunded wars, a prescription drug bill, and more—that created a massive deficit. Obama inherited a staggering deficit; he didn’t create it. Now, there’s a whole different debate to be had about the long-term effect of Obama’s policies on the deficit, but that’s not what Bachmann’s saying. She argues that the mess we’re in now is Obama’s fault. Bzzt. False.

The “massive unemployment” we have today also isn’t Obama’s fault. Look at the following graph, which tracks the national unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, from when Bush took office to the present.

As you can see, the jobless rate climbed from a low of 4.4 percent in May 2007 to a high of 10.1 percent in October 2009. The bulk of that increase occurred during the latter years of George W. Bush’s presidency, when the housing bubble burst and financial markets went into melt down. The reasons for those crises are many, spanning multiple presidencies. But to say, as Bachmann does, that “massive unemployment” is a result of Obama’s policies is wrong. (Not that Obama should get off easy; he came into office with an 8.4 percent jobless rate, and it’s now at 9.2 percent. Many economists argue that Obama hasn’t done enough to stem the nation’s jobs crisis, which shows no signs of abating.)

Finally there’s Bachmann’s claim that Obama’s health reform law is unconstitutional. Bachmann would likely back this up by pointing to court decisions this year declaring the law unconstitutional. But there are also judges who have said the opposite, including a federal appeals court judge appointed by a Republican president who clerked under conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. That judge, Jeffrey Sutton, ruled late last month that Obama’s reform law is in fact constitutional.

In other words, Bachmann’s attacks on Obama are miles from factually accurate. Which makes you wonder: Has Michele Bachmann’s crack fact-checking operation gone on vacation?

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate