In the last week or so, a dizzying array of Republicans have made it their official stance that $33 billion to extend unemployment benefits must be fully paid for, but financing a $678 billion extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy with deficit spending is just fine. “I think we need to be paying for all the spending that’s going on,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). “But when people can keep more of their own money that shouldn’t be considered a cost.”

Today, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) tackled this topic and started to go down the same road as the likes of Bachmann and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who was the first to set foot in this fiscal fantasy land. But he then pivoted to suggest that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should be funded with unspent stimulus funds:

Q: Are you for extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, yes or no? [...] Are you paying for them? Or are you for adding to the deficit to continue those tax cuts?

Barrasso: There is so much unspent stimulus money that we ought to use that in a responsible way, which is to help keep taxes low.

Watch it:

This is problematic on two levels. First, it’s simply not true that there’s “so much unspent stimulus money” just lying around. According to the latest data, there is $362 billion in stimulus funding waiting to be allocated (see chart at right), so Barrasso is still $325 billion short of the money he would need to cover the $678 billion cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for just the richest two percent of Americans.

And a longer look at the chart reveals that $125 billion of the unallocated funding is already dedicated to tax cuts. Remember, despite conservative’s constantly portraying it as only federal spending, the stimulus cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. So Barrasso’s plan to repeal the money amounts to a tax increase on the lower- and middle-classes, which Barrasso wants to then turn around and spend on tax cuts for the rich.

Barrasso didn’t explicitly call for raising taxes on the poor and middle class in order to pay for his preferred policy outcome (which is tax rates for the wealthy that are as low as possible), but that’s what his suggestion would do. A similar sentiment was made far more directly by Wall Street Journal Editorial Board member Stephen Moore, who called for raising the rate of the lowest tax bracket in order to bring down tax rates for the rich.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Last month, the Interior Department instituted a six-month moratorium for wells deeper than 500 ft, directing them to “cease drilling any new deepwater wells, including wellbore sidekick and bypass activities.” “With the BP oil spill still growing in the gulf, and investigations and reviews still under way, a six-month pause in drilling is needed, appropriate, and prudent,” said Salazar.

But the “pause” in drilling is leading to some imprudent rhetoric from supporters of more oil drilling. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) sent a letter to the Obama administration on Monday claiming that the moratorium would cause more “economic devastation than the oil spill itself.” On PBS last night, Sen. John Barrasso called it “a second assault on the Gulf“:

LEHRER: Senator Barrasso, do you believe that the bulk of the responsibility and the lack of action, as you say, should go to B.P., or do you think it’s now the federal government’s responsibility?

BARRASSO: Well, today, in the Energy Committee hearing, the – - Secretary Salazar, the secretary of interior, said we have been on top of this and making the decisions from the beginning.

But I think, when the American people take a look at this, in day 51, and they see the oil continuing to spew out, they’re saying, is everyone helpless? What — what are the best ideas?

And — and I had additional questions for the secretary today about the moratorium, because I think that’s going to be a second assault on the Gulf, with — even by the department’s own recognition, that it’s over 100,000 jobs that can be lost if they don’t go back and continue to provide the energy for the people of the United States.

LEHRER: So, you’re — you — you are opposed to the moratorium?

BARRASSO: I am opposed to the moratorium.

In the same segment, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) defended the moratorium, saying that “we sure better know what went wrong before we continue to do this, because we sure don’t want to have another one of these things go off and fill the Gulf up all the more.” Barrasso wasn’t convinced, again calling it an “assault on the economy.” Watch it:

As soon as President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, right-wing governors, attorneys general, and state lawmakers immediately began pushing measures to nullify the new health care benefits. However, even many conservative legal scholars acknowledged that their argument for the unconstitutionality of health reform was “weak” and nothing more than a political stunt. Nullification efforts around the country have largely lost momentum and failed to pass.

Nevertheless, this morning on Fox News, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said that he wants to make this fringe view of health care reform a centerpiece of Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing:

BARRASSO: The other issue is the health care bill that’s come out — there’s a mandate everybody in the country has to buy a product. That’s a 10th amendment issue. Twenty states right now, Martha, are suing the federal government, and she is going to have to make a decision if she’s on the court about how that goes forward with these 20 states suing. So where do states’ rights come in, where is the role of the federal government, what can they mandate to the American people, and I’m going to want to hear answers on that.

And this is very different than a year ago with Sotomayor. This was not an issue because we didn’t have this unpopular health care bill that’s been forced down the throats of the American people.

Barrasso also seemed to imply that he’ll make the second amendment into a litmus test for Kagan, saying, “The attorney general does not agree with my interpretation of the second amendment; I want to make sure this nominee does. So that will be another issue.” Watch it:

When Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) also put out a statement indicating that he was going to make health care an issue, saying that “the court’s interpretation of the Constitution in the coming years could significantly affect the implementation of domestic polices approved by the president and Congress over the past year.”

The right-wing belief that health care reform is unconstitutional has no legal foundation. As University of California, Irvine law professor Erwin Chemerinsky has stated, “Those opposing health care reform are increasingly relying on an argument that has no legal merit: that the health care reform legislation would be unconstitutional. There is, of course, much to debate about how to best reform America’s health care system. But there is no doubt that bills passed by House and Senate committees are constitutional.”

Transcript: Read more

Earlier this month, the Weekly Standard accused President Obama of selling a judgeship to win over Rep. Jim Matheson’s (D-UT) vote on health care. The Standard’s John McCormack first published a blog post floating the conspiracy that Obama had nominated Scott Matheson, Jr., the brother of Rep. Matheson, to the Tenth Circuit to pressure the Blue Dog Democrat into supporting the Senate’s health care reform bill. That evening, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for an “independent investigation” of the White House on Larry King Live and the story was immediately picked up by Drudge and other conservative media.

On Monday, a day after the House approved the Senate legislation, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) again suggested that Matheson voted for the bill because of the alleged quid pro quo:

BARRASSO: What a coincidence! In Utah, a member from Utah who voted for the bill, he was against it and then he was for it. And what a coincidence, his brother just got named to be a federal judge. How do you make those decisions?

Watch it:

Barrasso apparently didn’t know that the right-wing conspiracy theory had already been discredited. The nomination did not sway Matheson’s vote; he voted against the Senate bill last week.

Barrasso’s spokesperson is now claiming that the senator simply “misspoke.” “I think there were a lot of different stories last week about the appointment, and that’s how he got or had the wrong idea,” the spokesperson claimed. In their rush to make false allegations against Democrats, conservative blogs and Fox News propagated unsubstantiated stories that unfairly tarnished Scott Matheson’s legal qualifications.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Last month, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) announced that he would travel to Copenhagen in December to act as a climate skeptic “truth squad” during international climate change treaty negotiations. “I think somebody has to be there — a one-man truth squad,” Inhofe said on CSPAN. Today, on Bill Bennett’s radio show, Inhofe revealed that his delegation has expanded to “a truth squad of three”:

BENNETT: And John Barrasso’s going with you, right? John Barrasso?

INHOFE: Yeah, Barrasso and there’s another secret person going with me. We’re going to have a team of three, a truth squad of three.

Listen here:

When Inhofe first announced his plans for a “truth squad,” TPM’s Eric Kleefeld remarked, “It’s nice to see how seriously foreign policy is taken these days — when a member of the political minority will send his own delegation to an international conference, in order to undermine the government and tell other countries that they can’t work with the United States.” Now it’s at least two members of the political minority.