Blunt Fibs Again About His Health Care Record

Roy Blunt seems to have a problem: once again, he's taken advantage of a friendly Missouri radio host to fib about and inflate his record in Washington.

In a fawning interview earlier this week on 97.1 FM's Allman in the Morning program, Blunt praised himself for producing meaningful health care reform ideas.  Here's an excerpt:

Health care, I'm sponsoring a double handful of individual bills that aren't a thousand pages, that each one of them would help impact cost and help with the health care system...

I'm once again sponsoring an individual bill on lawsuit abuse reform, an individual bill on associated health plans, a bill we just filed last week where people under 25 who want to stay on their parents' policy could stay on their parents' policy up to 25.

There's just one small problem with this claim: Roy Blunt has only sponsored three pieces of legislation in the entire 111th Congress.  

• One resolution expresses support for designating May 1 as "Silver Star Service Banner Day"
• One bill provides for a "reduction in the number of boutique fuels" as outlined in the Clean Air Act
• And the third piece of legislation is the one he mentioned on the radio, which is intended to "improve health insurance coverage of dependents"

And even if you give Blunt the benefit of the doubt and count co-sponsored legislation in Blunt's "double handful of bills" -- something he wouldn't try and wouldn't get away with when talking to a Capitol Hill reporter -- his record is underwhelming.

Of the health care-related bills sponsored by other Republicans recently added to Blunt's website, he has co-sponsored just seven.  And get this:

• He didn't sign on to cosponsor any of them until October 15. 
• In fact, at the time of his interview, there were no cosponsors who had attached their name at a later date than Blunt (there's now a 53rd cosponsor to HR 2607, but that didn't happen until yesterday). 

Regardless, Roy Blunt knows the difference between sponsoring and cosponsoring bills, and it seems he's operating on the (reasonable) assumption that he won't be called out on his fibs, exaggerations and lies when he's back in Missouri.

Listen to the full 97.1 FM interview here.

Image credit: @RoyBlunt