Grassley helped spread ‘Lie of the Year’

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning Web site operated by the St. Petersburg Times, has picked its “Lie of the Year,” and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, played a part in spreading it.

The lie that stood out above all other in 2009, according to Politifact, was a Republican talking point that end-of-life planning provisions included in health care reform legislation will lead to the government deciding whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care.

Or, as it was more commonly known, “death panels.”

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

The claim began on the Facebook page of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but it was quickly picked up by other GOP dignitaries, including Grassley.During a town hall forum in Winterset, Grassley told the crowd that they “have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life; you ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

Later in the day, Grassley repeated the euthanasia claim, saying the provisions lead people to believe “that someone is going to decide grandma’s lived too long.”

For the next month, Grassley and his staff took turns defending and distancing the senator from the statement.

By the end of the year, Grassley was blaming media reports for his association with the death panels meme. In a letter to a constituent forwarded to The Iowa Independent, Grassley said some “commentators” took his comments and twisted them as saying that health care reform would establish death panels.

“I said no such thing,” Grassley said. “As I said then, putting end-of-life consultations alongside cost containment and government-run health care causes legitimate concern.”

The death panel rumor and all its derivatives has been repeatedly debunked and dubbed a “Pants on Fire” lie by Politifact.