Fw: Here We Go Again: Distorted TV Ads For Campaign 2006

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Here We Go Again: Distorted TV Ads For Campaign 2006
The Republican party attacks Sen. Byrd and he responds. Both use misleading
material.
Aug. 3, 2005

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Summary

With 15 months to go before election day 2006, the
National Republican Senatorial Committee unleashed
an attack ad in West Virginia in an attempt to
soften up Democratic Senator Robert Byrd for an
eventual GOP challenger. Byrd responded immediately
with a TV ad of his own.

Both ads contained shopworn distortions.

The NRSC
ad accused Byrd of voting "against body armor"
and "for higher taxes for the middle class" - as
misleading now as when Bush used the same attacks
against Kerry last year.

And Byrd responded by claiming he was being
attacked by "out-of-state special interests" with
an "agenda" that includes "tax breaks for companies
that ship our jobs overseas." In fact, the
ad was run by a political party and not by a
"special interest," and the tax breaks Byrd mentions
have been in place for decades, even when
Democrats
had a majority in the Senate and Byrd was their
leader. Few economists see those tax breaks as a
serious drain on US jobs.

Analysis

The NRSC ad is the first TV spot run by any national
party organization in the 2006 elections, which are
still 15 months away. Neither ad gets any points for
originality: both ads contain recycled distortions.
The NRSC announced its ad Aug 1 and said it would
run for at least two weeks in West Virginia at a
cost of "tens of thousands" of dollars. Byrd's ad
went up Aug. 2, and his website appealed for $55,000
to fund the response.

Body Armor, Again

The NRSC ad recycles a misleading claim that
Republicans used repeatedly against John Kerry in
2004, saying Byrd voted "against body armor in the
war on terror" in contrast to his votes "for
soldiers" earlier in his career.

What Byrd and Kerry actually voted against, of
course, was an enormous $87-billion supplemental
appropriation in 2003 that the Bush administration
sought to finance military operations and
reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. The
$87-billion spending bill contained a Pentagon
request for $300 million for "best-grade" ceramic
body armor for all troops in Iraq, many of whom had
been sent with older-style armor. As we pointed out
in an article last year, those funds for body armor
constituted only one-third of one percent of the
entire bill. There was no specific vote for or
against the $300 million for body armor.

Byrd says he voted against the $87 billion measure
because it contained $18.4 billion to rebuild Iraq
and not because of the $300 million for body armor.
He says he has voted for additional body
armor and
armoring of Humvees on several other occasions,
which the record shows is true. For example, only
last month he was on the winning side of a 100-0
vote favoring more spending on armored, wheeled
vehicles for the Army and Marines. (Vote 199, 25
July 2005) And he was also one of those who
supported an amendment last year to require the
Pentagon to reimburse troops or their families for
body armor or other equipment purchased for use in
Iraq or Afghanistan. (Vote 112, 14 June 2004)

Taxes? "Higher" Than What?

The NRSC ad also claims Byrd "votes higher taxes for
the middle class," which is craftily worded and
quite misleading. The NRSC cites votes by Byrd in
2001 and 2003, but those were not votes to
raise
taxes, they were votes against Bush's
proposed tax
cuts. That might make taxes "higher" than
Bush
wanted them but not higher than they were at the
time. Furthermore, those cuts delivered more relief
for upper-income taxpayers than for the "middle
class."

In fact, the ad ignores Byrd's vote for the "Working
Families" tax relief act which Bush signed last
October, extending several tax reductions for
middle-income families. (Vote 188, 23 Sep
2004).These included keeping the per-child tax
credit at $1,000, rather than allowing it to revert
to $500 per child as had been scheduled.

The NRSC cites only one vote by Byrd that was
actually in favor of raising taxes. That one wasn't
"today," it was a dozen years ago - the 1993 Clinton
deficit-reduction measure, which also contained
spending cuts. That 1993 measure did raise taxes on
the middle class but only very slightly. It raised
the gasoline tax by 4.3 cents per gallon. It also
increased the amount of Social Security benefits
that are subject to taxation, but only for those
making $44,000 a year for a married couple. The rest
of the increase was focused almost exclusively on
the highest-earning one percent of households.

Special Interests?

Byrd's counter-attack also makes claims that don't
stand up to factual scrutiny.

Byrd's ad says "out-of-state special interests" are
attacking him falsely, while showing a video snippet
of the NRSC ad. But the Republican party can't
accurately be called a "special interest" any more
than the Democratic party could be. The term is most
commonly used to describe lobbyists for narrow
economic concerns, and sometimes for one-issue
ideological groups as well. Broad-based political
parties just don't fit the definition.

For example, Princeton University's Worldnet defines
"special interest" as "an individual or group who
are concerned with some particular part of the
economy and who try to influence legislators or
bureaucrats to act in their favor." Byrd is way off
the mark here.

Tax Breaks for Outsourcing?

The Byrd ad also claims that the "agenda" of those
attacking him includes "tax breaks for companies
that ship our jobs overseas." We dealt with this
misleading claim at length last year when Kerry and
other Democrats were using it against Bush. In fact,
nobody is pushing to enact any such tax breaks.

It is true that US-based companies already have a
tax incentive to use foreign-earned income to build
factories overseas rather than bring profits back to
the US to be taxed at higher US rates. However, that
has been the case for decades - as long as the US
has taxed corporate income, in fact. It was true
when Bill Clinton was President, and it was true
when Byrd himself was the Senate Democratic leader
from 1977 to 1991. And, for most of that time,
Democrats had the majority.

Furthermore, as we said a year ago when Kerry was
using this line of attack, the tax break actually
has little effect on US jobs. Even those experts who
support a change in the tax code say multinational
businesses build plants in other countries mainly to
take advantage of lower wages and to be near their
global customers, too, not just for tax reasons.

And speaking of symbolic issues . . .

Flag Burning?

The NRSC ad claims Byrd votes "to allow flag
burning." This mischaracterizes his position and
record. It is true that Byrd voted in 2000 against
proposing an amendment to the US Constitution that
would give Congress the power to prohibit the
physical desecration of the U.S. flag. That measure
needed a 2/3 majority to pass, and Byrd was among
37
senators voting against it, ensuring its defeat. But
voting not to amend the Constitution isn't the same
as voting "to allow flag burning," which is already
allowed by Supreme Court decisions.

Among the
reasons Byrd gave at the time for his vote was that
"flag burning, though loathsome, is hardly
pervasive enough to warrant amending the
Constitution."

In his own ad, Byrd says he is "protecting our
flag." It is true that he co-sponsored a bill last
month that would make it a federal crime to
desecrate the flag, but only if it is done "with the
primary purpose and intent to incite or produce
imminent violence or a breach of the peace," which
would be a hard thing to prove and wouldn't cover
the simple burning of the flag as a protest. That
bill is pending.

If these two ads are representative of what's to
come in the next 15 months, we'll be busy here at
FactCheck.org.

Sources

Congressional Record, 29 March 2000: S1858

109TH CONGRESS
S.1370, "To provide for the protection of the flag
of the United States, and for other purposes,"
introduced 1 July 2005.

Senate Roll Call Votes 108th Congress - 1st Session
S. 1689 (Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for
Iraq and Afghanistan Security and Reconstruction
Act, 2004) Vote #400 17 Oct. 2003.

Related Articles

Did
Kerry Vote "No"
(http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rqgaznbab.0.ltjcznbab.l89skabab.9260&p=http%3A%2F%2
Ffactcheck.org%2Farticle155.html) on Body Armor for Troops?

Bush
accuses Kerry
(http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rqgaznbab.0.mtjcznbab.l89skabab.9260&p=http%3A%2F%2
Ffactcheck.org%2Farticle159.html) of 350 votes for "higher taxes"
Higher than what?

Bush Still Fudging
the Numbers
(http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rqgaznbab.0.ntjcznbab.l89skabab.9260&p=http%3A%2F%2
Ffactcheck.org%2Farticle247.html)on Kerry's Tax
Votes

DNC Ad
Says Bush Lost Manufacturing
(http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rqgaznbab.0.otjcznbab.l89skabab.9260&p=http%3A%2F%2
Ffactcheck.org%2Farticle234.html)Jobs

Kerry
Blames Corporate Tax Code
(http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rqgaznbab.0.ptjcznbab.l89skabab.9260&p=http%3A%2F%2
Ffactcheck.org%2Farticle225.html) for Shipping Jobs
Overseas

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