Friday, September 19, 2014

FACTCHECK.ORG FINDS SCHILLING AD "SHAMEFULLY MISLEADING"

FactCheck.org found a recent Bobby Schilling ad "shamefully misleading". The ad features a series of veterans claiming that Congresswoman Cheri Bustos voted to "cut their benefits". The vote they refer to was the bipartisan budget deal worked out between Rep Paul Ryan (R) and Sen Patty Murray (D). The deal avoided any cuts to Social Security and Medicare and restored some of the sequester cuts to the military. The original bill did reduce some future cost of living pension increases for a small percentage (less than 4%) of military retirees.

The two other salient points here are that;

  1. The changes to future pensions never happened - they were restored in a separate bill that Cheri Bustos voted for
  2. The original proposal, to reduce future cost of living adjustments, was a Republican idea

I find this attack particularly disgraceful on Schilling's part because when he was in congress, he always voted for Paul Ryan budgets, including ones that tried to turn Medicare into a voucher program.