Blunt: Caught squarely in “pants-on-fire” territory

Perhaps embarrassed by their choice to print Roy Blunt's reality-challenged opinion piece on President Obama's climate change proposals, the Star has printed a response from Vanessa Crawford, climate change coordinator for Missouri Votes Conservation.  Crawford highlights the job creation and economic development opportunities of the proposal before Congress, and then addresses his lies head-on:

But for some reason, Rep. Blunt is more committed to the status quo on energy, and has dismissed the American Clean Energy & Security Act as an “energy tax”.

To validate this spurious claim, Rep. Blunt cites an MIT study that apparently concludes that such an energy program would cost consumers $3,100.

As it turns out, Rep. Blunt is happy to freelance with the numbers when it serves his interest, and in this case, he’s been caught squarely in “pants-on-fire” territory.

An author of the study has publicly rebuked Rep. Blunt’s portrayal of their study, saying $3,100 was actually “10 times the correct estimate which is approximately $340,” and that the costs on lower and middle income household can be completely offset. That’s right—to make his case, Rep. Blunt had to multiply the cost of the program by 10.

In fact, a new analysis released by the Environmental Protection Administration shows that the American Clean Energy & Security act “could make the median household, and those living at lower ends of the income distribution, better off than they would be without the program.”

The need to lie and exaggerate (by 1000%) says a lot about the validity of Blunt's argument, don't you think? 

It's too bad that the Star couldn't take the time to address the gross factual errors before they printed Blunt's piece -- still on their site in all its bogus glory -- but at least they printed the response.