Rapid Response
As the people of Monroe County are besieged with false and misleading, negative advertisements put forward by Maggie Brooks and her SuperPAC allies, it is more important than ever to counter the right-wing spin and get the truth out there. Please share the content of this page widely to help us get voters the truth about Louise's record and middle class agenda before Election Day.
Thank you for your help-
The Louise Rapid Response Team
Fact Check:
How Louise and the Stimulus Bill created 3.3 million jobs (Crossroads GPS Rebuttal)
Did Louise Slaughter Vote To Raise Her Pay?
Maggie Brooks Failed Record of "Bipartisanship"
Did Louise Vote To Raise Taxes on Middle Class Families?
Louise Has Never Supported Any "Medicare Tax" (Young Guns Rebuttal)
Republican’s 2012 Dirty Campaign Tricks
Has Maggie Brooks Lowered Taxes?
Maggie Brooks’ Record of Fiscal Mismanagement
How Louise and the Stimulus Bill created 3.3 million jobs (Crossroads GPS Rebuttal)
Crossroads GPS, a Republican SuperPAC, run by Karl Rove and funded by anonymous right wing interests, is running $1.4 million worth of false attack ads against Louise. Their ad inaccurately claims the stimulus bill was a failure and is centered on several debunked claims.
x Claim: Louise Slaughter voted for a failed Stimulus bill
✔ Fact: The Congressional Budget Officer reported the Stimulus created 3.3 Million jobs, including 392,876 jobs in New York. [Washington Post, 6/6/12] [Recovery.gov, accessed 10/12/12]
x Claim: Slaughter’s vote sent nearly $2 million to California to collect ants in Africa
✔ Fact: The ad’s evidence was the discredited Coburn-McCain report of 2010, which has been proven unreliable, grossly inaccurate, and false. [CNN, 1/25/10, as posted by the White House, 1/26/10], [White House, 8/3/10], [Politfact, 9/24/10].
x Claim: $25 million dollars for snow making in Vermont
✔ Fact: No Federal Money Was Spent On Snowmaking In Vermont. The Wisconsin State Journal reported that claims that $25 million in stimulus money was spent on snow-making machines in Vermont were a “snow job.” In reality, Mount Snow ski resort in West Dover, which the ad cites, qualified for a government bond not for stimulus money. Regardless, the resort decided to pass on the opportunity – meaning “no bonds were issued, and no money was spent.” Mount Snow’s general manager said claims to the contrary were “so bogus it's not even funny." [Wisconsin State Journal, 10/29/10]
x Claim Almost $300,000 to Texas to study weather on Venus
✔ Fact: The text of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the bill that Congresswoman Louise Slaughter voted on, does not contain specific language or an earmark for a weather study in Texas.
Did Louise Slaughter Vote To Raise Her Pay?
A Maggie Brooks ad and billboard have claimed Louise voted to raise her pay 7 times in Congress. This is misleading and not true:
✔ Fact: Members of Congress cannot vote to raise their own pay, they can only vote to raise the pay of future sessions of Congress.
✔ Fact: Louise has not voted to raise the pay of any future session of Congress since 1989. Louise did vote for an ethics bill that incorporated automatic pay raises, but since the recession began, Louise has voted against any automatic pay raises Congress may be scheduled to receive.
✔ Fact: Louise voted against raising her pay during the recession
vs.
✔ Fact: Maggie Brooks allowed her husband to be appointed to a patronage position at the County Water Authority, where he made more than $1 million in taxpayer funded salary and benefits. Even worse, Maggie let her friends on the County Water Authority raise her husband’s salary from $82,000 to $123,000 over the course of just 6 years!
✔ Fact: The County Water Authority gave her husband a waiver, granting him special permission to double-dip his $123,000 salary while collecting a $62,000 per year taxpayer funded pension.
Maggie Brooks Failed Record of "Bipartisanship"
Maggie Brooks claims she has presided over an era of bipartisanship in Monroe County and has run on the idea she could end partisan gridlock in Congress. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
x Claim: Maggie Brooks has a record of bipartisanship
✔ Fact: Maggie Brooks has presided over a viciously partisan era in Monroe County.
✔ Fact: Monroe County government is riddled with partisan gridlock. Maggie has signed only 1 Democratic bill from the County Legislature over the past 4 years. Brooks and her Republican allies have blocked the other 69 bills. It is not uncommon for a Democrat to introduce a bill in the Legislature, see Brooks block it or refuse to collaborate, and then reintroduce the same bill as her own without any Democratic sponsors. That is not the spirit of cooperation or bipartisanship.
✔ Fact: Republicans have presided in the most hyper-partisan and least productive Congressional session since the 1960s. If elected, Maggie has promised to collaborate closely with the architects of gridlock, Eric Cantor and John Boehner. Neither of them would be traveling to Monroe County and raising money for Maggie if they didn’t know they would own Maggie’s vote in Congress.
Fact Check: Did Louise Vote To Raise Taxes on Middle Class Families?
The false accusation that Louise has voted to raise taxes for the middle class might be the most repeated attack used by Maggie Brooks and her Republican SuperPAC allies. We’ve subjected each of their claims to a fact check:
x Claim: Louise voted against lowering taxes on the middle class.
✔ Fact: Louise has taken many votes supporting lower taxes for the middle class. She believes in extending the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year. Fact checks from the Democrat & Chronicle have questioned the accuracy of these claims here and here.
The bills Louise voted against were intended to lower taxes for people with higher incomes. Louise supported the bills when they were just tax cuts for the middle class, but opposed them when they became handouts to the wealthy.
x Claim: Louise voted for an energy bill that would raise taxes on the middle class.
✔ Fact: The bill Louise voted for would help not hurt people from lower and middle-income backgrounds. An MIT study found the cap-and-trade bill would help, not hurt people with lower and middle income backgrounds. Further, cap and trade programs could spur the creation of thousands of green jobs, and could help America build a green economy [MIT Study, 8/4/2010, Business Insider 03/10/2009]
x Claim: Louise voted for a health care bill that raised taxes on the middle class.
✔ Fact: The Health Care bill will lower costs and will not raise taxes for middle class families. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans will receive insurance for the first time and benefit from reduced health care costs and prescription drug prices, as well as free preventative care.
Additionally, the individual mandate is not a tax on the middle-class, but a penalty for those who choose not to receive insurance on the individual market. It will affect only 6% of the population. [Source: Urban Institute March 2012]
Louise Has Never Supported Any "Medicare Tax"
A recent piece of mail put out the Young Guns, a conservative SuperPAC run by former Eric Cantor staffers, has been making false claims and distorting Louise’s record on Medicare.
✔ Fact: Louise has never supported any Medicare tax.
✔ Fact: Louise has always fought to protect Medicare benefits and to make health care as affordable as possible. The Affordable Care Act, which Louise helped pass, has already helped more than 10,400 seniors in Louise’s district save $6.7 million prescription drugs and receive free preventative care and reduced co-pays.
✔ Fact: Louise is not associated with the bill in question, H.R. Bill 2190. She is not a co-sponsor and has never voted on it.
✔ Fact: H.R. 2190 is not a tax. It would save the government $100 billion by reducing Medicare Part D drug costs for taxpayers and force insurance companies to pay for rebates that are provided to people too poor to afford health care.
x Canvassers are identifying Louise supporters, checking them off a list, and then telling people they are all set and do not have to vote.
✔ Your support does not equal a vote unless you cast an official ballot or official absentee ballot on Election Day.
x GOP groups, masquerading as environmentalists, are calling voters lying about Louise’s record on hydrofracking.
✔ To clarify, Louise does not support the expansion of fracking without a guarantee it would not affect the safety and quality of our drinking water. Nor does she support Monroe County accepting fracking wastewater, something Maggie Brooks has refused to rule out.
Has Maggie Brooks Lowered Taxes?
x Claim: Maggie Brooks says she has lowered the property tax rate in Monroe County.
✔ Fact: Maggie has raised property tax levies by 19%, and Monroe County has the 3rd highest property taxes in the nation relative to their home value. [Source: Monroe County Budgets 2005-12, CBS News 5/18/11]
✔ Fact: Maggie has increased service fees for taxpayers by up to 327%, leading many Monroe County taxpayers’ bills to skyrocket. [Source: Democrat & Chronicle, 5/1/11]
Maggie Brooks’ Record of Fiscal Mismanagement
Maggie Brooks is running on a platform of fiscal management, claiming to have kept taxes low and the budget stable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Monroe County taxpayers have seen their bills skyrocket, while the county government has become mired in scandal and debt.
x Claim: Maggie Brooks says in government, she is “committed to fiscal integrity.”
✔ Fact: Maggie Brooks has driven Monroe County further into debt by $389 million. [Source: 2012 Monroe County Budget]
✔ Fact: Maggie Brooks has governed in with fiscal mismanagement and irresponsibility. She has been cited for weak budget management by outside analysts. [Source: Democrat & Chronicle 5/6/04, 7/10/07]
✔ Fact: Monroe County has the second worst credit rating in the state and sits two notches above “Junk Bond Status.” Monroe County has seen three credit downgrades during Maggie’s administration. [Source: Moody’s Rating Agency, Moody’s Rating Agency]