Georgia Rep. Paul Broun is concerned about an energy bill killing old people in hot states. What happens when Floridians and Georgians turn up their thermostats in summer, to save on bills? Waves of death, says this esteemed "medical doctor."

Here's what Broun — who comically suggested that all old people would die under any sort of health care reform, too, which he compared to the "Great War of Yankee Aggression" — had to say on the House floor Wednesday night regarding even the whiff of a clean energy bill:

BROUN: A lot of old people in Georgia and Florida and all out throughout the southeast and the southwest are dependent on air conditioning just to live. And if their electricity bills go sky high, as the energy tax is gonna make it happen, if that ever passes there are a lot of people that can't afford to run their air conditioning any more and a lot of people are gonna have a hard time with hyperthermia is what I call it - what we call it in medicine as a medical doctor - which means that their body temperature's gonna go up, they're gonna have dehydration, and people are gonna have a lot of problems. And it's gonna have a greater impact on our health care system and people are gonna die because of that. But it's gonna kill jobs too.

Oh right, jobs too. But more importantly: constant human death.

Is there really a point in responding to the particulars of what he's saying? Old people dying en masse across the American South because they might, might have to turn up their thermostats from 68 to 71 in summer, to save cash — assuming they don't just stop buying as much other shit to offset the costs of saving their lives? The federal government will never require old people in the South — especially permanent swing-state Florida — to do anything. This is pretty much a rule.

Anyway, Broun's comments should be in a Sarah Palin viral Facebook note shortly.

[via Washington Monthly]