Last week, MIT professor John Reilly called out Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) for intentionally misrepresenting Reilly’s cap-and-trade study to claim that President Obama’s emissions reduction scheme would cost American families more than $3,000 a year. “It’s just wrong,” Reilly told the St. Petersburg Times in reference to Boehner’s use of his study. “It’s wrong in so many ways it’s hard to begin.”

Well, that didn’t stop Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) from hopping on board the Boehner train. This morning, she wrote an op-ed in the Star Tribune that kept Boehner’s distortions alive, and then some. She argued:

Any way you look at it, it’s low- and middle-income Americans who will pay dearly for this. According to an analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by $3,128 per year. Using an analysis by Peter Orszag, President Obama’s budget director, that number would be closer to $4,000.

I can’t speak for Peter Orszag, but I have a feeling he would take issue with these numbers, too. A report issued by the Congressional Budget Office, of which Orszag was director until he was tapped for his new post, estimated that low-income families would see their bills increase by $680 annually. But since Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme, as outlined in his budget proposal, would give these families an $800 rebate, they’d actually come out ahead.

Take a look at the first figure in this CBO chart:

cbo-chart

Then again, this isn’t the first time Bachmann has misrepresented someone else’s words.

(H/T The Hill)