Fact checkers continue to fail Michele Bachmann But Only When She Opens Her Mouth

A brief excerpt from MinnPost's survey of fact checking the most recent GOP debate:

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s fact checker, files his assessments, noting: “It’s hard to know where to start with Michele Bachmann’s characterization of the problems with the federal budget. According to Bachmann, 'every year we are spending about 40 percent more than what we take in,' the reason is out-of-control spending and the debt-limit deal that gave Obama ‘another $2.4 trillion blank check to spend.’ Whew! Let’s start with the debt-limit deal. Congress approved an increase in the debt limit to pay bills already incurred by Congress. It does not give Obama new authority to spend more money. It just lets the federal government continue sending out Social Security checks, feeding soldiers in the field and paying doctors who see Medicare patients. And guess what? Even if Obama wins not a dime of additional spending, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling again in early 2013. Even the House Republican budget, an austere document drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), calls for nearly $2 trillion in additional borrowing by the end of next year. So, the debt-limit deal let Obama keep the government functioning, not spend more money. Now, it is true that the federal government has spent dramatically more than it has taken in over the past few years, since tax collections collapsed in the wake of the housing meltdown, the banking crisis and the recession. In 2009, the nation borrowed about 40 percent of every dollar it spent (spending 67 percent more than it took in — Bachmann got the proportions wrong).” Detail guys ... they’re so boring.
Not to be left out of the fun, The New York Times’s Binyamin Applebaum looks into a couple of Bachmann assertions. The best of them is this: “Bachmann suggested that the federal government caused the boom in subprime mortgage lending by pushing banks to lower ‘platinum level’ lending standards. There are two problems with that assertion. The most important problem is that the vast majority of subprime loans were not made by banks or other lenders regulated by the federal government. They were made by mortgage companies that were not subject to regulation of any kind. The problem, if anything, was the complete lack of government supervision. The assertion also mis-characterizes the historical relationship between the government and banks. Regulators can sometimes prevent banks from acting, but there is almost no evidence that the government can push banks to make loans they don’t want to make. This point has been underscored over the last two years, as the Obama administration has begged and pleaded with banks to start making loans, and banks have largely declined to do so. Banks did make sub-prime loans in large numbers, and the reason they did so, according to their own executives, was that they saw a chance to make lots of money.”

 Which is pretty rough, coming on top of the STrib finding Bachmann to be extreme in her views.  Extreme AND wrong; now that is a potent combination.  All of which finds Bachmann's strategy in Iowa is failing as well.