House Armed Service Committee Chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) has served up a myriad of scarcely legitimate reasons for why Congress should not cut the bloated Defense budget: It’s “dangerous,” no one will save us “when we’re attacked,” or that entitlement programs are “the main drivers of our deficit.” But his latest claim has even raised the eyebrows of some Republicans.

On Fox News yesterday, McKeon bemoaned that the proposed cuts could endanger the strength of our military. “We also need to understand what it’s going to mean to keep an all-volunteer force. Do we want to reinstitute the draft,” he asked. “Some of the cuts we’re talking about would take 200,000 out of end strength of our military.” South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson (R) — notorious for shouting “you lie” at the president — called McKeon out on this actual fib:

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., chairman of the Armed Services personnel subcommittee, on Wednesday expressed concerns about defense cuts but said a draft was unnecessary.

“I’m concerned that the cuts are so devastating to our national security that almost any negative consequence can arise, but I actually have supported and continue to support as a budget-cutting measure elimination of the Selective Service,” Wilson said in an interview.

The lawmaker, who attended the Marine Corps graduation at Parris Island last Friday, said service members are volunteering even in a time of two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We have the new greatest generation,” Wilson said. “We don’t need as large a military due to the technology we have, the equipment we have outfitting our personnel. They really are storm troopers.”

It is important to note that Wilson chose to compare the U.S. military force to Nazis or (more charitably) to the fictional foot soldiers of the evil imperial army in Star Wars.

However, he is correct that there’s virtually no possibility of a draft. The Army recently exceeded its recruitment goals without sacrificing standards. Wilson also correctly notes that recent technology makes certain military earmarks obsolete. For instance, the Pentagon itself requested that Congress kill funding for the F-35 fighter jet, stating that “every dollar additional to the budget that we have to put into the F-35 is a dollar taken from something else the troops may need.” Moreover, as Political Correction noted in a post on McKeon’s comments, even if the most drastic cuts are implemented, defense spending would go back to 2007 levels. Needless to say, the U.S. military did not need a draft then even while fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. currently spends more on the military than the next 14 biggest spenders combined. To claim that the much-needed and very sustainable cuts could spur a draft reeks of political spin. The whole idea left Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) bemused: “The all-volunteer Army seems to be working pretty well. Reinstating the draft? I don’t know what that accomplishes.”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) announced last night that President Obama “threw the first punch” at the “honorable” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) who had no choice but to fight back by calling the president a liar. King’s comments were made at a reception featuring Lou Dobbs and hosted by the nativist hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), as part of their “Hold Their Feet To The Fire” annual anti-immigration lobbying campaign:

A lot of us said this health care bill is going to fund illegals. And the President said “prominent politicians are lying to you”…Well, it turns out that the Senate is going to fix the language in the health care bill to require proof of citizenship.

And a real good sign is, Luis Gutierrez — the number-one amnesty leader in the United States Congress is really ticked off at his friend and neighbor President Obama because his hope for amnesty in the health care bill is going down because of who? Joe Wilson. God bless Joe. He said what we were thinking and I don’t think there’s ever been a President who comes to the House of Representatives as a guest of the members of the House and made a declaration like he did. I mean, the President threw the first punch…Joe’s a man of honor. He’s an officer and a gentleman and he’s a patriot. And he loves and respects the Constitution and this country.

Watch it:

The President actually said:

“Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost…There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

Undocumented immigrants were and still are excluded from both the House and Senate health care bills. Obama didn’t name names, but Wilson, King, and other Joe-Wilson-apologists have made it abundantly clear what side of the aisle the bogus claims are coming from. In a press call today, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) indicated that he “accept[ed] legislation that prohibited access to taxpayer-subsidized health insurance for undocumented immigrants” weeks before Obama’s speech. However, he is upset with the president not because he blocked amnesty, but rather, because the White House has proposed denying undocumented immigrants “non-government access to health care that they can use their own dollars to purchase.”

The Smithsonian Institution later acknowledged that it “made in error” in letting a hate group rent its facilities at the National Postal Museum to host the event that King spoke at.

Rep. Steve King (R-TXIA) isn’t just defending Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) “you lie” outburst, he’s also standing behind Wilson’s decision to vote in favor of keeping the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol. In an interview this morning on Fox News, King praised Wilson’s moral character and brushed off concerns about the racist connotations that many believe the Confederate flag imparts:

“He is an officer and a gentleman and everyone who knows him knows that…being a son of the South puts you in a different position when it comes to the Confederate flag. It means something entirely different to the people who have ancestors who fought in the Civil War on the south side of the Mason-Dixon line. So I think Maureen Dowd is trying to whip this up and I also know she’s trying to put race into it. I didn’t know what race she was talking about when I first read her line on that.”

Watch it:

It seems that King has forgotten that for many Americans, the Confederate flag represents a lot more than the “War of Northern Agression.” In fact, the decision to fly the Confederate flag over South Carolina’s Capitol was also infused with meaning. While other Southern states took down their rebel flags, an all-white South Carolina legislature fought and won to keep theirs waving above their statehouse as the Civil Rights movement picked up steam in 1962. In 2000, Wilson was one of the seven Republicans who voted to keep it there. During the 2000 fight, one of his fellow legislators — state senator Arthur Ravenel — referred to the NAACP as “the National Association of Retarded People” and later apologized to “retarded people” for associating them with the NAACP. The Confederate flag has since been moved to the Capitol lawn.

Wilson has also been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, identified as a “source of increasingly virulent pro-Confederate, radical right propaganda.” Maureen Dowd cynically described Wilson as being part of a “loco fringe” that “clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president.”

Most right-wingers and health care reform haters have at least conceded that there’s language in the House health care bill that explicitly excludes undocumented immigrants, but none of them are willing to swallow their pride and admit that Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) blow-up was also factually incorrect. Republicans incessantly continue citing “loopholes” that they suggest actually do render President Obama a liar, or at the very least, misinformed.

Wilson has accused “liberals who want to give health care to illegals” of using his opposition to distract from the debate at hand. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) and House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC) Chairman, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) have both suggested that President Obama was either lying or talking about “some other bill.” Former Gov. George Pataki (R-NY) says Obama’s comments raise “questions” and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has also come out of the woodwork to say “Joe is right, Obama is a liar.” Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) said that he was outright insulted by Obama’s myth-breaking, and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and many others have defended Wilson’s position by slamming Democrats for voting down stringent verification mechanisms. Watch it:

Democrats have made it pretty clear that they’re not interested in providing “illegals” health care. Their decision to vote against verification amendments had more to do with the fact that one would’ve given private insurance providers unprecedented access to the sensitive income and identity information and another would have blocked several categories of legal immigrants from receiving benefits. Nonetheless, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) have expressed that they’re willing to back down.

Baucus and Conrad should tread carefully. Not only would such a move validate the lies and fears that right-wingers have stoked in both the immigration and health care debates, it could also seriously hurt all Americans. When Colorado passed a series of stringent measures requiring applicants for most state benefits to prove their immigration status, it cost the state $2 million in its first year alone and — despite having promised to eliminate 50,000 undocumented immigrants from the state’s public benefit rolls — state officials could not prove that any undocumented immigrants were being denied public services. The Government Accountability Office further found that documentation requirements used to prove Medicaid eligibility caused thousands of eligible U.S. citizens to lose Medicaid coverage without saving taxpayers any money: for every $100 spent by taxpayers to implement documentation requirements in six states, only 14 cents were saved. Yesterday, Bilbray announced on CNN that the E-Verify program should be used to check eligibility. However, the Immigration Policy Center points out that the web-based program has a “high probability for database errors.” A human resources association claims that E-Verify has a 4.1% error rate — one that could grow if implemented on a larger scale and deny or dely health care coverage for a sizable percentage of the American population.

It would be one thing if such mechanisms were necessary to block undocumented immigrants from getting health care, but there’s several barriers already in place. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act prohibited undocumented immigrants from being eligible for most public benefits and codified procedures for verifying eligibility. There’s nothing in the bill that changes that or the stringent verification mechanisms in Medicaid discussed above. Tax policy experts have further pointed out that it would be difficult for undocumented immigrants to even apply for subsidies, because tax returns are required to determine a person’s eligibility and the few undocumented immigrants who do file taxes using phony Social Security numbers almost always use “personal identification numbers” from the IRS, which immediately flag their immigration status.

Health-care reform proponents claim that few undocumented immigrants enrolled in Medicaid even before proof of citizenship was required. If that’s true, Republicans are essentially belly-aching over a non-issue. Ultimately, a flawless verification mechanism simply doesn’t exist and it’s probably worse to deny hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of eligible citizens and legal immigrants health care coverage than to let a small handful of ineligible immigrants get health insurance that they need just as much as anyone else. After all, an effective health care system covers as many people as possible and as Matt Yglesias points out, it’s too bad the President and Democrats are getting pounded for doing something that they’re not, despite the fact that it’s actually not a bad idea if you care more about what makes economic and moral sense and less about what makes sense politically.