FactCheck.org Needs to Check Their Facts
FactCheck.org recently analyzed a Club for Growth PAC television ad that criticizes Senator Lincoln Chafee's record on wasteful spending and higher taxes (you can watch the TV ad here and FactCheck.org's analysis here).
FactCheck.org called the ad "misleading", but in truth, FactCheck.org's review of our ad is itself grossly misleading.
First, the spending part of our message -- our ad hits Chafee for supporting various egregiously wasteful spending earmarks including the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. Factcheck.org starts off by saying that "Chafee didn't vote specifically for any of the items mentioned." Untrue. Senator Tom Coburn offered a simple, clean amendment which would have stripped part of the direct funding from the "Bridge to Nowhere" and transferred it to a bridge that had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Chafee voted specifically against this Coburn amendment and for the "Bridge to Nowhere."
Building on their false claim, FactCheck.org implies that our criticism is unjust because the other pork projects mentioned in the TV ad are so tiny in the context of these massive spending bills. They choose to ignore the fact that these bills are so massive precisely because of projects like the ones we mention. The transportation bill ($286.4 billion) that contained the Alaska bridge was infested with over 5000 earmarks ($) costing about $24 billion.
These spending bills, all of which Chafee supported, have been so rife with waste that I would have felt fully justified using them against him even if we didn't have the specific vote on the bridge that Factcheck.org ignores. His vote against Coburn's amendment made it a no-brainer and calls into question the honesty and motivation of Factcheck.org.
On taxes, we charge Chafee with voting for "...higher income, social security and gas taxes. Over a trillion dollars in higher taxes."
Factcheck.org gets into the semantics game of claiming that voting against the Bush tax cuts doesn't constitute voting for higher taxes. I'd be happy to defend our side in that debate but we don't have to rest our charges on those votes alone. Chafee has also repeatedly voted against measures to extend expiring provisions of the Bush tax cut package. Clearly those are votes to allow these tax rates to jump back up when the current lower rates expire. And if all that weren't enough, the dispositive fact is that Chafee has voted repeatedly for straightforward tax increases, sponsored by Democrats, in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006
If you want more information on Chafee's various tax votes, click here.
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