Michele Bachmann is in a class by herself, as far as political fact-checkers are concerned. The outspoken, and often inaccurate, Republican congresswoman from Minnesota has made more than a dozen assertions that either were false or really false, according to PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning feature of the St. Petersburg Times that checks whether statements made by politicians are true.

 

“We have checked her 13 times, and seven of her claims [proved] to be false and six have been found to be ridiculously false,” PolitiFact editor Bill Adair told Minnesota Public Radio. “I don’t know anyone else that we have checked, more than a couple times, that has never earned anything above a false. She is unusual in that regard that she has never gotten a rating higher than false.”

 

Bachmann’s falsehoods include claims that:

 

-Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi racked up bar tabs of $100,000 for alcohol on military jets she flew on. (The $100,000 figure actually included such non-alcohol-related expenses as “baggage fees, meeting room rentals and refreshments, and, frequently, good-will lapel pins—as well as meals, ground transportation and lodging in U.S. territory.”)

 

-President Barack Obama’s trip to India last year cost $200 million a day. (This myth came from one dubious source in India and has no basis in fact.)

 

-The Constitution only requires Americans to tell census takers how many people live in a household. (The Constitution doesn’t even address the issue of what the census asks; Congress makes that decision. Bachmann was encouraging people to break the law by not answering simple census questions.)

 

-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has considered getting rid of the U.S. dollar in favor of a fictional multinational currency. (Geithner discussed Chinese attempts to create an international reserve currency. He never came close to proposing that the dollar be eliminated. In fact, he didn’t even support the Chinese proposal.)

 

-Swine flu broke out under a Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. (Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president during the first swine flu outbreak in 1976.)

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Bachmann Approaches Iowa with Trail of Misstatements (by Tom Scheck, Minnesota Public Radio)

All Statements Involving Michele Bachmann (PolitiFact.com)