So it's been a banner week for Morning Joe. False equivalencies, lots of Pat Buchanan, and now the entire panel just fueled the Republican rumor that the IRS would be hiring 16,500 new agents to enforce the healthcare reform mandate.
FactCheck.org via Oliver Willis:
This wildly inaccurate claim started as an inflated, partisan assertion that 16,500 new IRS employees might be required to administer the new law. That devolved quickly into a claim, made by some Republican lawmakers, that 16,500 IRS ‘agents’ would be required. Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas even claimed in a televised interview that all 16,500 would be carrying guns. None of those claims is true.
To his credit, Scarborough corrected the record on another matter when I sent him a tweet. I wonder if the Scarborough-less crew will do the same. They should.