Washington Post calls out Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp for telling whoppers about Obamacare enrollment stats

Republican hawks since 2008, particularly those with a tea party bent, have possessed a fetishistic reflex to cast any triumph by President Barack Obama as an undeserved honor or an outright lie.

When Osama bin Laden was captured and killed in 2011 after a decade of futility in locating the terrorist financier, former George W. Bush administration officials were quick to suggest that Obama’s predecessor deserved credit for something that happened three years after he left office.

When unemployment numbers were better than expected in the run-up to the 2012 elections, right-leaning corporate executives claimed the numbers were fudged.

When enrollment figures for the Affordable Care Act hit the Obama administration’s goal by March 31, Senate Republicans were quick to say he cooked the books.

Now Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp, a tea party firebrand who championed the government shutdown last year, is getting in on the act. Huelskamp has been touring his district for town hall meetings, repeating a claim that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has increased the number of uninsured. It’s a bold claim, given that the Affordable Care Act is supposed to do the opposite.

It’s a claim that The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” said last week was bogus, earning Huelskamp a full four-Pinocchio rating on the newspaper’s blog, which denotes a whopper of a lie.

“Huelskamp can be as big a critic of the law as he wants, but he’s not entitled to conjure phony facts out of thin air,” wrote the Post’s Glenn Kessler.

Kessler says Kansas uninsured rates have remained mostly flat since 2008, and while close to 30,000 Kansans signed up for insurance on federal exchanges, a firm number is elusive until the 2013 census reports come out.

Kessler tried to pin down the numbers Huelskamp was referencing when he claimed that the number of uninsured Kansans was increasing, but Huelskamp staffers didn’t respond until 12 hours after the Post went ahead and published its story.

Huelskamp flogged The Washington Post for quoting a former Kathleen Sebelius staffer and offers census stats that suggest there are 8,000 more uninsured Kansans than in 2010. (Kessler responded that the percentage remained the same from 2010 to 2012; the Affordable Care Act wasn’t fully implemented until 2013.)

Huelskamp’s statement signs off with a ding at the Post’s circulation numbers, pointing out that subscriptions at one of the nation’s leading papers is down 14 percent.