Issues: Jobs

Crossroads GPS: “Silly Spending” NY-25

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Crossroads GPS hits Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) over her support for the Recovery Act, suggesting Slaughter voted for a series of wasteful projects while New York lost jobs. But the Recovery Act helped keep the recession from becoming even more severe, and the outlandish things Crossroads claims Slaughter supported are seriously misrepresented. Meanwhile, New York and the country as a whole have been gaining jobs since the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Read more after the jump.

Crossroads GPS: “Silly Spending” IA-03

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Crossroads GPS hits Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) over his support for the Recovery Act, suggesting Boswell voted for a series of wasteful projects while Iowa lost jobs. But the Recovery Act helped keep the recession from becoming even more severe, and the outlandish things Crossroads claims Boswell supported are seriously misrepresented. Meanwhile, Iowa and the country as a whole have been gaining jobs since the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Read more after the jump.

NumbersUSA: “October 2012 TV Ad”

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An ad from anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA suggests that lawmakers’ motivation for granting green cards to immigrants is a belief that “black Americans don’t want to work,” basing this on the false premise that immigrants displace jobs that would otherwise be filled by Americans. But there is little truth to this; immigrants expand the economy by increasing demand, thereby creating new jobs and driving up wages for native workers.

Read more after the jump.

American Crossroads: “Four More”

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American Crossroads looks forward in its latest ad, warning viewers that President Obama’s second-term plans will bring tax hikes on small businesses, job losses, and higher debt. In reality, Obama wants to extend tax cuts for the middle class while phasing out tax breaks on income above $250,000. That would reduce deficits without harming job creation, and the flawed study that American Crossroads cites to claim otherwise does not actually address Obama’s proposal. Meanwhile, the ad also claims that Obama has “nothing to show” for his first term, ignoring the economic disaster he inherited and the 4.7 million new private-sector jobs created over the last 31 months of growth.

Read more after the jump.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “Cheri Bustos”

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacks Illinois congressional candidate Cheri Bustos (D), claiming that her support for the Affordable Care Act disregard’s “job-killing tax hikes on small businesses” and higher taxes on middle-class families. But the claim that the law will kill jobs has been debunked, and it contains tax credits for both small businesses and lower- and middle-class families.

Read more after the jump.

Crossroads GPS: “Vision”

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In an ad accusing Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) of casting votes that ‘cost Ohio jobs,’ Crossroads GPS misrepresents the American Jobs Act, the Affordable Care Act, and Brown’s vote to end the Bush tax cuts for top earners. The American Jobs Act would have boosted employment and GDP while cutting payroll taxes for workers and employers, paid for with a surtax only on millionaires, but all the ad says is that it’s a “tax increase.” To help pay for expanding coverage, the Affordable Care Act levies a small tax on medical device manufacturers, who are likely to see increased business thanks to the law. And the “new small business tax” is no such thing: Brown voted to preserve tax breaks for the middle class while ending them for top earners, few of whom are real “small businesses.”

Read more after the jump.

Crossroads GPS: “Looming”

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An ad from Crossroads GPS attacks Virginia Senate candidate Tim Kaine (D) over his support for last year’s deal to raise the debt ceiling, which created the deficit reduction super committee and imposed defense cuts as an incentive for members to find a compromise. The super committee failed, and GPS blames Kaine for upcoming defense cuts, which could impact Virginia-based defense industry jobs particularly hard. But Kaine supported the debt ceiling deal because it was necessary to avoid devastating economic default, and he has laid out a plan to avoid the impending defense cuts.

Read more after the jump.

U.S. Chamber Of Commerce: “John Tierney”

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An ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce cites the Affordable Care Act, Wall Street Reform, and the Bush tax cuts to build the case that Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) has “one of the worst voting records for small businesses.” But Tierney voted against various efforts to extend provisions of the Bush tax cuts because Republican plans routinely involved giveaways for the wealthy at the expense of the deficit, while the health care reform law includes tax credits for small businesses and Dodd-Frank targets large firms, not small banks.

Read more after the jump.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “IL-11 Can’t Afford Bill Foster”

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce relies on stale misinformation to attack former Rep. Bill Foster’s (D-IL) positions on health care and tax policy. To support the claim that Foster’s support for the Affordable Care Act means “job-killing regulations on our small business owners,” the Chamber cites a Gallup poll that did not actually mention the health care law at all – and which identified weak consumer demand as the main obstacle to hiring. Furthermore, the Chamber dishonestly claims that ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will hurt job-growth, citing a flawed study that the Chamber itself commissioned.

Read more after the jump.

The Week In Conservative Attack Ads

We checked 26 new attack ads in the last week, including a trio that appeared late last Friday afternoon. The heavy volume makes sense given that the campaign is entering the home stretch, and it was powered by 15 new U.S. Chamber of Commerce ads, all of them in House races. Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS (3 ads) and American Crossroads (2) combined to come in a distant second, and the remaining six came from the arch-conservative Club for Growth, the anti-immigration obsessives at NumbersUSA, the Iowa-based American Future Fund, Restore Our Future, and the abortion-focused Susan B. Anthony List’s new “Women Speak Out PAC.”

Read more after the jump.