Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) is hyping the myth that the Obama administration is planning to replace the dollar with a global currency. In fact, the proposal under discussion (which the Obama administration does not support) would create a new global reserve currency — it would not replace the dollar as the legal currency here in the US.

Bachmann has even proposed a constitutional amendment that would prevent the president from entering “into a treaty or other international agreement that would provide for the United States to adopt as legal tender in the United States a currency issued by an entity other than the United States” As TPM DC’s Eric Kleefeld points out, it has a disturbing number of cosponsors (currently 32). Are these members — who are all Republicans — aware that no one is proposing creating a new currency that would serve as legal tender in the United States? I suspected that they might be pandering to ill-informed constituents but education, income, etc. are not closely related to cosponsorship — the only consistent predictor is the conservatism of the legislator’s previous voting record.

Bachmann’s straw man legislation inspired me to check out another well-known myth — the fictitious “NAFTA superhighway” that was hyped by Ron Paul and talk radio hosts. And in fact former Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) introduced a resolution in 2007 expressing the sense of Congress that “the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada.” That bill attracted 52 cosponsors, including eight Democrats. With the exception of Marty Kaptur, a free trade opponent from Ohio, all of the Democrats — including Kirsten Gillibrand, the newly appointed senator from New York (!) — represented heavily rural districts that John Kerry lost in 2004. Supporters of the resolution tended to be more conservative and anti-trade.

When we combine the cosponsorship lists on these bills, we get what I call the Congressional myth caucus — the fourteen members who sponsored or cosponsored both Bachmann’s amendment and Goode’s resolution:

Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)
Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
Paul Broun (R-GA)
Mary Fallin (R-OK)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Walter Jones (R-NC)
Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)

Ron Paul (R-TX)
Zach Wamp (R-TN)

It’s a brilliant approach to politics — you scare people with a phony rumor, take a stand against a position no one supports, and then claim credit for its defeat.

Update 5/6 12:12 PM: The list above has been corrected to fix a coding error.