The Obama-aligned group Organizing for Action is once again attacking members of Congress for questioning the science behind global warming.
In an email to supporters, OFA Chair Jim Messina attacked House Speaker John Boehner and Republicans on the House Science Committee for their global warming views, claiming that the evidence shows that human produced carbon dioxide emissions is behind climate change.
“Break out the tin foil hats, folks,” Messina wrote. “As long as our members of Congress continue to develop their own theories behind climate change, we will fall further and further behind in our ability to make actual progress on this issue.”
This comes just a week after the group came under fire from fact-checkers for releasing a video that claimed hundreds of members of Congress voted to call global warming a “hoax” — which apparently didn’t happen.
“Number of House members who voted in 2011 that climate change was a ‘hoax’: 240,” the video said.
The vote OFA referred to was on an amendment introduced by Democrats to a Republican bill that blocked the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, not the science behind global warming, reports Fox News. However, the amendment did not include the word “hoax.” Both FactCheck.org and The Washington Post said the claim was inaccurate.
“Organizing for Action would have been correct to say that 237 Republicans opposed an amendment accepting ‘the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring’ and ’caused largely’ by humans. But that’s not the same thing as calling climate change a ‘hoax,'” said FactCheck.org
“In this case, the Obama group has twisted the meaning of a relatively minor amendment — which was clearly intended to become fodder for future campaign ads,” according to the Washington Post. The Democrats’ amendment failed 184-240.
The Daily Caller’s Alex Pappas recently explained how members of both parties use minor amendments that are designed to fail as political cudgels against opposition legislators.
President Obama, who in 2008 defined his campaign as “the moment when…the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” has made fighting global warming a major priority during his second term, telling Congress that he would use his own executive authority to act on the issue if Congress failed to do so.
House and Senate Democrats have moved to introduce legislation to impose a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, which Republicans have criticized as essentially taxing all goods in the economy.
“It’s not just energy prices that would skyrocket from a carbon tax, the cost of nearly everything built in America would go up,” said Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter. “Let’s not lose sight of how big of a dud cap and trade was in 2009, or as it came to be known, cap and tax. This is really no different.”
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