On the February 5 Your World, former Senator Jim DeMint, now President-elect of the Heritage Foundation, spoke about the President seeking more tax revenue. He said, “The federal government will receive record, historically high tax revenues this year, yet we’ve doubled spending over the last 10 years. It’s a spending problem. The President is not willing to cut spending at this point.” Sound familiar? DeMint made a similar claim the year before and it was rated “false” by PolitiFact. But guest host Stuart Varney offered no challenge.

Not only was DeMint’s claim rated false in June, 2011, when using deficit as a share of GDP, PolitiFact found he was off by 6 decades! The numbers are not much better for Mint when looking at the estimated figures going forward (via OMB, linked to in the PolitiFact report).

But Varney swallowed this reiterated claim without question and used it as a launching point for more fear mongering about the deficit and taxes. He later asked, “Do you predict debt disaster if we raise taxes?”

DeMind answered, “I think our deficit will go up because that’s going to cut a big hole in our economy so tax revenues will begin to dry up.”

On Fox’s own website, there’s a report that 80 top CEO’s called for tax hikes (along with spending cuts) to reduce the deficit. I’d trust them over DeMint any day.