Cramer Misleading, Spreading Falsehoods All the Way to Election Day

(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer’s misinformation campaign is kicking into high gear as he attempts to paper over his record of putting himself and his special interests above North Dakotans. From health care to the trade war to distorting his own record while misleading North Dakotans about Heidi’s, Cramer is proving that he’s “one of the best fudge masters in Washington, D.C.”

PolitiFact on the Cramer-Endorsed Trade War

  • For workers in America’s heartland, the good news of savings from President Donald Trump’s tax cuts is getting overshadowed by concern over his disruptive trade policies.
  • “My equipment manufacturers tell me whatever advantage they’ve gotten from the tax code change has been eaten up in the very early months of the steel and aluminum tariffs,” Heitkamp said on CNBC on July 20, 2018.
  • Economists tell us the effects of the tariffs, while imprecise so far, are not pretty.

PolitiFact on Cramer’s Health Care Agenda

  • Whatever Cramer’s wish is, his votes jeopardize coverage as it stands for pre-existing conditions in the individual market, according to Karen Pollitz, senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health care organization.
  • By the letter of the law the bills protect pre-existing conditions. But they take away the mandate that everyone be insured and the subsidies that make that affordable. In practice, plans for individuals in the nongroup market would become exorbitantly priced, if available at all.
  • The limits of what insurance companies could charge would have been watered down, which would have sent premiums skyrocketing, experts say, to the point that coverage for many would be unattainable.

HEADLINE: PolitiFact: Kevin Cramer distorts record on government shutdown

  • Cramer, running to unseat Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, touted a clean record without any support for shutdowns… We took a closer look.
  • Cramer has cast votes that indirectly resulted in a shutdown.
  • We found multiple instances where Cramer indirectly helped to cause a shutdown by voting for bills that defunded Obamacare — these bills had no chance of survival in the Senate or of being signed by then-President Obama. While Cramer’s actions were not direct votes on keeping the government open, they encouraged the 2013 shutdown.
  • We rate this statement Mostly False.

HEADLINE: Washington Post: N.D. Republican’s Senate campaign ‘fact-checking’ website promotes false claim on CBO estimates

  • For a website that proclaims it is providing the truth and nothing but the facts, this line about the tax cuts and economic growth is poppycock. The CBO does take into account the economic effect of tax bills, so Cramer is simply wrong on that score. It’s even worse for a politician to suggest he is a deficit hawk — and ready to take on entitlements — and yet dismiss credible forecasts on future deficits by a respected agency.
  • Four Pinocchios.

HEADLINE: PolitiFact: Kevin Cramer distorts Heidi Heitkamp’s record on banking regulations

  • A review of the evidence shows that Heitkamp has been working on banking issues since she was elected in 2012… “During the entirety of (her tenure), she has often expressed a desire for regulatory relief for community banks and credit unions,” said Rob Blackwell, editor of American Banker. “The idea that she’s a johnny-come-lately to regulatory reform just doesn’t hold water.”
  • Heitkamp has been an advocate of regulatory relief for small banks since she ran for the Senate in 2012. Cramer announced his Senate bid in February. Heitkamp’s lack of support for the regulatory relief that Cramer supports does not mean she is disinterested in regulatory relief.
  • We rate this statement False.

Valley News Live: Cramer’s Ad “Misleading”

  • By using the video, it appears as though we are questioning Senate Majority PAC on their latest ads. We are not. Watch and listen.
  • Because of this, we must label the most recent ad from Cramer’s campaign as ‘misleading.’

Zaleski, The Forum on Cramer’s False Promise to Protect Medicare and Social Security:

  • The ad’s premise is false. Cramer has always wanted to mess with Medicare—cut benefits, privatize portions of the program, etc. He can’t fudge his record, although he is one of the best fudge masters in Washington, D.C.
  • The ad relies on shrewdly ambiguous weasel-words… He is vague about future Medicare for people currently in the workforce (would he gut benefits?), while he preaches to oldsters who are on the program now, who vote, that he’s their Medicare evangelist. It’s not blatant deceit; it’s duplicitous half-truth.

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