Issues: Jobs

Congressional Leadership Fund: “Twinkle”

adcheck •

Citing a series of votes between 2008 and 2011, Congressional Leadership Fund blames Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) for the rising debt. In reality, recent deficits have been fueled by the recession and Bush-era policies like tax cuts for the wealthy. The votes the ad targets, by contrast, were for bills designed to rescue failing banks, the floundering housing market, and a tanking economy, and to raise the federal debt limit – a procedure that does not authorize new spending but does prevent the government from defaulting on its loans.

Read more after the jump.

Now Or Never PAC: “Radical Agenda”

adcheck •

Now or Never PAC attempts to portray Heidi Heitkamp as a pro-Wall Street, environmental radical, who will “rubber stamp” President Obama’s second-term agenda, but the evidence does not support the group’s claims. After all, Heitkamp’s opponent has taken more than 10 times as much cash from Wall Street than she has — and over $600,000 total from the broader finance, insurance, and real estate sector. That makes Heitkamp’s $22,000 from lawyers whose clients include opponents of fracking look fairly insubstantial – especially when Heitkamp is on the record harshly criticizing President Obama on energy policy.

Read more after the jump.

Congressional Leadership Fund: “Hall Of Fame”

adcheck •

Congressional Leadership Fund accuses Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH) of voting for an expensive stimulus bill that “created jobs in China,” but the article the ad cites points to a project that never actually received any stimulus money. The ad also criticizes Sutton for her support of a cap-and-trade bill and the bank bailout, even though the former would have stimulated the economy with little cost to consumers and the latter, which passed in a bipartisan fashion after urging from President Bush, helped avert another Great Depression.

Read more after the jump.

Crossroads GPS: “Hand Picked”

adcheck •

Crossroads GPS attacks Indiana House candidate Brendan Mullen (D) over the Affordable Care Act, overlooking Mullen’s stated commitment to ‘fixing’ certain elements of the law that he does not support. The ad ridiculously suggests the law is “the largest tax increase in history on the middle class,” misleads on the impact of future Medicare spending reductions that do not cut seniors’ benefits, and fearmongers about the impact of the Medicare board responsible finding additional savings – an element of the ACA that Mullen actually wants to change.

Read more after the jump.

American Action Network: “Rail”

adcheck •

The American Action Network dishonestly attacks congressional candidate Jose Hernandez (D-CA-10) for living in Texas, branding him as a cowboy and a carpetbagger even though the California native only lived outside the state while working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center as an astronaut. The group also criticizes Hernandez for supporting high-speed rail as a way to create jobs, as well as the Recovery Act, which helped save the economy from an even deeper recession.

Read more after the jump.

American Action Network: “Tax And Spend”

adcheck •

American Action Network goes after congressional candidate Val Demings (D-FL) over her support for the Recovery Act and for ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, saying she supports wasting Floridians’ money. But the stimulus, which passed without any involvement from first-time candidate Demings, helped save the economy from an even worse recession, and ending the Bush tax cuts for top-tier earners would impact few real small businesses.

Read more after the jump.

American Crossroads: “At Stake”

adcheck •

Clint Eastwood may not speak to an empty chair in the ad he filmed for American Crossroads, but he’s no less confused about President Obama’s record than he was during his infamous performance at the Republican National Convention. The octogenarian actor says, “In the last few years, America’s been knocked down,” ignoring nearly five million new private-sector jobs created in the last two-and-a-half years of growth. He also wrongly blames Obama for high deficits driven mainly by Bush policies, such as tax breaks for the wealthy, and the recession the president inherited.

Read more after the jump.

Americans for Tax Reform: “B is for Barrow”

adcheck •

Grover Norquist’s anti-tax organization, Americans for Tax Reform, released an ad attacking John Barrow (D-GA). The group, which pushes Norquist’s rigid “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” cites Barrow’s votes for the banking and automotive bailouts as reasons against Barrow’s re-election. However, the ad never mentions the economic context that made both bailouts necessary, or that the bailouts worked. The automaker bailout, for example, saved over a million American jobs in 2009-2010 and one of America’s largest industries.

Read more after the jump.

American Action Network: “Again”

adcheck •

The American Action Network wants you to know that Rick Nolan stands “for raising taxes and killing jobs” – 700,000 jobs, to be precise. But that number comes from a study that explicitly did not analyze the actual White House proposal for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The on-screen claim that Nolan would tax 894,000 small businesses is similarly bogus, as that definition of “small business” includes multi-billion-dollar corporations and both candidates for president. The ad is correct about Nolan’s 1975 votes on gas taxes, but they somehow fail to mention the same bill included tax credits to offset the increase in pump prices.

Read more after the jump.

American Crossroads: “Survive”

adcheck •

An ad from American Crossroads features two small business owners talking about the challenges they face, which they blame on President Obama’s policies. However, despite the statements in the ad, the conservative charge that taxes and regulations are holding back job growth is not supported by the evidence. Instead, experts cite consumer demand, which plummeted as a result of the recession Obama inherited, as the key to increased hiring. While we are still recovering from the devastating impact of the recession, the private sector has added 4.7 million new jobs over the last 31 consecutive months of growth. Meanwhile, consumer confidence is now at its highest level since 2007.

Read more after the jump.