Serious smackdown from non-partisan FactCheck.org on the DCCC's attack ads against Sean Duffy.
In Wisconsin and Kentucky House races, the Democrats are attempting to mislead voters into believing the Republican candidates support the privatization of Social Security — despite evidence to the contrary.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is up with an ad attacking Republican Sean Duffy in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, but the spot mischaracterizes Duffy’s position on Social Security. While Duffy has made some ambiguous statements in the past, he has never said he supports a privatized Social Security system, and in fact has recently said just the opposite.
In Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, the attack line is similar — and equally wrong. Rep. Ben Chandler’s latest ad says Republican Andy Barr “wants to privatize Social Security and gamble it in the stock market.” But Barr has never said he supports privatization. Barr clearly says on his website: “I will oppose plans to privatize Social Security.”
On top of that, the DCCC’s ad tries to frighten seniors by saying that under a privatized system, they could have lost "nearly 40 percent of their retirement benefits" when the stock market collapsed in 2008. That’s ridiculous, and could only have happened in a system where 100 percent of beneficiaries’ money was given over to Wall Street. Recent proposals to let individuals have optional private Social Security accounts would let them invest only a portion of their payroll taxes, meaning the rest would have been perfectly safe, and one plan currently being discussed guarantees against any losses by investors.
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