Last updated on June 5th, 2014 at 11:42 pm
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) took to his website to fearmonger today about President Obama’s climate change policy and PolitiFact was not impressed.
The Republican Speaker of the House claimed “The president’s plan would indeed cause a surge in electricity bills — costs stand to go up $17 billion every year. But it would also shut down plants and potentially put an average of 224,000 more people out of work every year.” For this claim, the Ohio Republican earned a big, fat “false” from PolitiFact.
The President unveiled new EPA guidelines to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants today and of course, John Boehner freaked out because Republicans believe regulations are for women’s bodies, not for big industry.
PolitiFact wondered how Republicans could have already read the 645 pages long plan, but of course, Republicans don’t bother with things like reading directly. They leave that for the Chamber of Commerce and other lobbyists. The factfinders realized that yes indeed, these accusations came straight a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study that was released in late May, which was based on predictions about the proposals Obama released today.
The Chamber got their predictions wrong and thus Boehner repeated inaccurate accusations based on flawed predictions.
But since Republicans don’t bother to read for themselves and are just in Congress to do as the Chamber tells them, Boehner felt free to pontificate and accuse based on the second hand failed mind reading of the Chamber.
Making public statements based on the “predictions” of a group with monied interest in finding fault isn’t the smartest thing to do if you value your credibility… And it earned Boehner a big false:
Boehner said the EPA’s plan to regulate carbon emissions in existing power plants will increase electric bills by “$17 billion every year” and “potentially put an average of 224,000 more people out of work every year.” Those numbers are based on a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study that came out before the EPA announced the regulations on existing power plants.
That study wrongly assumed the administration would set a benchmark of reducing carbon emissions by 42 percent before 2030. The regulations released June 2 actually put forward a 30 percent reduction within that timeframe. The chamber itself told PolitiFact its estimates are not based on the goals as announced.
But despite these serious flaws, Boehner used the numbers anyway. We rate his statement False.
If anyone is putting people out of work, it’ the Speaker of the House whose own caucus has ensured they work less than any recent congress, while also making sure to never pass any of Obama’s jobs bills other than his veterans jobs bill.
Remember this the next time Republicans “weigh” in on legislative matters, or any matters for that point. When they aren’t complaining about the length of a bill that they were given more than a year to read, they’re letting ALEC and the Chamber dictate policy to them — often times not even based on reality, as we see here.
So Boehner hates Obama’s new regulations and has lots of scary stories to share about them, except he’s not basing his critique on Obama’s actual new guidelines. Boehner based his criticism upon the Chamber’s prediction of Obama’s new EPA guidelines. This is sort of like claiming you read the Benghazi emails and they implicate Obama and Clinton, and then being busted for having never even seen them directly, but rather having them interpreted for you by an interested partisan party and passing that along as the truth.
Another Republican accusation down. Just how many of these can they make before their credibility becomes an issue?
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