Facts: Congress has never voted on a specific carbon tax proposal. Both the Tillis camp and the American Energy Alliance point to Hagan’s March 2013 vote against an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. Roy Blunt to require 60 votes to approve any potential carbon tax in the future.
The amendment failed. But it wasn’t a vote for a carbon tax; it was a vote against a nonbinding resolution requiring a high threshold for passing such a tax at some unknown point in the future.
Furthermore, there was no proposal that would have “destroy[ed] up to 67,000 jobs in North Carolina” over a decade, as Tillis’ campaign says. Instead, that number comes from theNational Association of Manufacturers analysis of two scenarios, and it’s the upper-most estimate for NAM’s high-end scenario. Technically, NAM didn’t say up to 67,000 jobs would be lost. Its figure is for reduced labor income. NAM notes: “This does not represent a projection of the number of workers who may need to change jobs and/or be unemployed, as some or all of the lost labor could be spread across workers who remain employed.”
Full Story: “More Carbon Tax Distortions,” July 24
Facts: According to the Congressional Budget Office, changes due to the Affordable Care Act will cause 2 million people to decide not to work, or to decide to work less – but it will not cause them to “lose their jobs.”
A Tillis ad attacking Hagan cites a February report by the CBO on the labor market effects of the Affordable Care Act. The CBO estimated a reduction in full-time-equivalent employment of about 2.3 million by 2021. But the drop is “almost entirely” due to a reduction in “the amount of labor that workers choose to supply.” The report specifically noted that the reduction in the workforce is not due to “an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).” The law will give some Americans the ability to voluntarily leave their jobs or cut back their hours without fear of losing health insurance.
Furthermore, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf explained that an additional part of the reason for the contracting of the labor force was due to the ACA subsidies providing a “disincentive” for some low-income people to work, or to work more hours, lest they lose health care subsidies.
Full Story: ” ‘Lost Jobs’ from Obamacare,” Feb. 10
Facts: This is a huge stretch. In fact, the bipartisan legislation in question is an attempt to roll back the government’s involvement in the insurance industry.
This claim, featured in an ad from the 60 Plus Association, a conservative advocacy group, is based on a bipartisan effort in the Senate to restructure the housing finance market and wind down Fannie and Freddie. The plan, supported by the White House, would replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a new agency, the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp. The idea is for the FMIC to function similarly to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., with the new agency acting as a backstop guaranteeing mortgages, but requiring that the first 10 percent of losses is absorbed by private capital.
Does that amount to a government “takeover” of the mortgage industry? Not compared with the way things work today.
As Politico put it in an article cited in small print in the ad, the plan, sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson and the panel’s top Republican, Mike Crapo, “represents a centrist approach in which the government will still play a role in supporting the mortgage market but less of one than it does today.”
Full Story: “Obamacare for the Mortgage Industry?” April 4999
Teacher raises
Claim: “A 7 percent pay raise. That’s what we passed this year for North Carolina teachers. That’s simple math.”
Who made it: Thom Tillis campaign ad.
The facts: The teacher pay raise included in the state budget came with a new pay scale that folded longevity pay – given to teachers with 10 years or more of experience – into the teacher’s regular salary. Teachers argued that you couldn’t take something they were already earning, repackage it and call it a raise.
Voting stance
Claim: Hagan voted with President Barack Obama 96 percent of the time.
Who made it: Tillis, Crossroads GPS.
The facts: The figures come from Congressional Quarterly, which catalogs votes. Hagan did vote with Obama 96 percent of the time in 2013 (and in 2012). In 2013, that was based on the 37.1 percent of Senate roll-call votes on which the president took a position.
She has veered from the administration’s position at times. In 2009, she supported a proposal by Republican Sen. Richard Burr to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from regulating tobacco products. Last year, she was one of 76 senators who unsuccessfully urged the president to toughen sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear activities. She supports building the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration keeps delaying.
Hagan has countered by saying she is “the most moderate senator,” based on this year’s ranking by the National Journal, a nonpartisan magazine that covers Congress. It found Hagan the 51st most liberal and 49th most conservative senator, based on an analysis of votes.
Claim: Hagan hasn’t authored a bill in six years.
Who made it: Tillis.
The facts: Hagan has not written a bill the president has signed but she’s been effective in other ways.
Some of her bills have been folded into other legislation, as typically happens in Congress. Hagan's bipartisan AMERICA Works Act, which requires that operators of job-training centers prioritize skills that will lead to nationally recognized credentials that are in demand, was added to a bill that streamlines federal job training. It became law this past summer.
In 2013, Sen. Hagan and Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and one of the Senate’s most conservative members, added an amendment to a budget bill to restore a program that pays tuition, one class at a time, for active-duty service members.
As a stand-alone bill, it could have languished. The amendment became law in two weeks!
Claim: The Affordable Care Act took $700 billion away from Medicare.
Who made it: Tillis.
The facts: The Congressional Budget Office estimated $716 billion in savings from Medicare from 2013-2022. The goal is to increase efficiency and quality of care.
PolitiFact, a nonpartisan fact-checking project, says: “Obamacare does not cut funding from the Medicare budget, but tries to bring down future health care costs in the program. Much of this is accomplished by reducing Medicare Advantage, a small subset of Medicare plans that are run by private insurers.”
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the ACA aka Obama Care “played an important role in putting Medicare on stronger financial footing.”
Immigration
Claim: Obama has failed to address immigration and strengthen border security.
Who made it: Tillis.
The facts: The comprehensive immigration bill the Senate passed 68-32 in June 2013 doubled the number of Border Patrol agents from 20,000 to 40,000 and added 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.
It also created a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who met certain requirements. Hagan voted for it, as did 14 Senate Republicans. But Republicans in the House of Representatives rejected it. The House never took up the broad immigration package that the Senate passed.
Foreign policy
Claim: Hagan skipped half the Armed Services Committee meetings and never held a meeting on ISIS on the Emerging Threats subcommittee that she chairs. And she missed a committee meeting to go to a fundraiser.
Who says it: Tillis .
The facts: Hagan’s campaign has said she missed most meetings because of conflicts with other committees that she’s on. Hagan says she held three closed meetings on the group that became ISIS, and that she has recently asked questions about the Khorasan group, an al-Qaida offshoot.
Last month, she joined a bipartisan coalition of senators in authorizing airstrikes in Syria against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. She said she supports the military airstrikes in Syria but thinks Congress needs to approve any further escalation.
Tillis said last month that he didn’t know whether the U.S. should arm moderate rebels in Syria. “I would have to know that these arms would not get in the hands of people who would want to take over the Middle East,” he said.
Hagan responded by saying, “I think he’s been spineless about what needs to be done to take out these terrorists.”
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| THOM TILLIS MAKES GINGRICH LOOK HONEST! |
"A declaration that the Federal Government will never restrain the presses from printing anything they please will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
"Printing presses shall be free except as to false facts published maliciously either to injure the reputation of another (whether followed by pecuniary damages or not) or to expose him to the punishment of the law." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes for a Constitution, 1794.
"Printing presses shall be subject to no other restraint than liableness to legal prosecution for false facts printed and published." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft of Virginia Constitution, 1783. ME 2:298, Papers 6:304
"Since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press confined to truth needs no other legal restraint. The public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions on a full hearing of all parties, and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of public opinion." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural Address, 1805. ME 3:381
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| Take it from Zelda Gilroy, Thom Tillis is a flaming fucking asshole! |
