Shades of Mike Huckabee’s lava soap and grandma’s-dirt-floor routine: Republican Rep. Tom Cotton has a new ad out noting that his mother didn’t have in-door plumbing as a child. (Harvard-educated Cotton suffered no such deprivation himself.) It’s one of a series of ads in which Cotton — who’s repeatedly supported measures to kill Social Security as it has long been known in favor of privatizing for future generations — claims to be a protector of Social Security against Sen. Mark Pryor.
Private savings accounts for the impoverished, rather than Social Security’s guaranteed safety net, is a good way to bring back, if not reliance on outdoor plumbing, grimmer realities for the neediest.
Another of Cotton’s ads continues the dishonest use of a snippet of out-of-context remarks that makes it appear Pryor has supported raising the retirement age. Cotton likes this lie so much he’s putting his own name on it, after use by a dark money PAC.
Still another Cotton ad — which claims that Pryor voted for Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants — is another lie. Politifact has branded it false. The fact-checking group says the claim has been debunked multiple times over the years. But that lie keeps circling the world, this time courtesy of Tom Cotton.
Mark Pryor has a response, of course. Summary, as it applied to NRSC ad:
The NRSC’s ad claims that Pryor voted “to give Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants.” That’s wrong for two reasons.
First, the provision was much more narrowly targeted than the ad suggests — it addressed the treatment of past payroll taxes paid by legal Social Security beneficiaries who at one time had been illegal immigrants. Second, the ad cherry-picks one vote Pryor cast against this provision while ignoring two separate votes he cast for the provision. We rate the claim False.