(BISMARCK, ND) – Congressman Cramer often boasts of his unfiltered honesty – and while his comments on women’s clothing or defense of Nazi comparisons certainly proves his lack of filter – the honesty part has proven more difficult, especially as of late. After being cast aside by his own party for months due to his repeated gaffes, speculation surrounding his potential Senate run finally mounted – and Cramer clumsily danced around the subject for months to keep it that way – contradicting himself and confusing North Dakotans in the process.

Even as he floated a run, Cramer couldn’t help but bitterly trash the very seat he was considering running for, saying that the U.S. Senate works in a way “that was never the intention of the founders.” He even badmouthed the 17th Amendment along the way, saying it saying it “worked against the people.”

Now, he’s back to his old tricks. Despite his claims that he would best serve the people of North Dakota in the House of Representatives, last week Cramer couldn’t help but yet again float the trial balloon that he’s “mildy reconsidering” his service in exchange for a Senate run.

But we’ve seen Cramer’s struggle with sticking to his principles before – while his office doesn’t pay interns for their work, Cramer has no issue reimbursing himself for official office expenditures with campaign funds, or paying others who work for his campaign – as long as they’re family, that is.

“Whether it’s paying himself and his family, but not his interns, or trying to keep himself in the news by dancing around a Senate run while trash-talking the body, Cramer’s double-speak is nothing new to North Dakotans,” said Scott McNeil, executive director for the Dem-NPL. “One thing is clear – the Tale of Two Cramers is a never-ending work of fiction – and North Dakotans are pretty tired of reading.”

(BISMARCK, ND) – It turns out that the partisan tax legislation – rushed through Congress and enthusiastically supported by U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell and Rep. Kevin Cramer – could actually lead to more outsourcing of good-paying American jobs.

In addition to adding nearly $1.5 trillion to the national debt, Cramer and Campbell not only supported a bill that cut middle-class families a raw deal, favored large corporations over small businesses, and at the time put Medicare and crop insurance on the chopping block, the Campbell and Cramer-backed bill also includes provisions for large corporations to ship their jobs overseas.

We know Republicans desperately needed to pass a bill – any bill – for “political survival,” but why did Campbell and Cramer support a bill that could severely impact American jobs? More details below:

According to The New York Times: “Tax Law May Send Factories and Jobs Abroad, Critics Say”

• “The bill that Mr. Trump signed, however, could actually make it attractive for companies to put more assembly lines on foreign soil.”
• “‘It’s sort of an America-last tax policy,” said Kimberly Clausing, an economist at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who studies tax policy. “We are basically saying that if you earn in the U.S., you pay X, and if you earn abroad, you pay X divided by two.’”
• “What could be more dangerous for American workers, economists said, is that the bill ends up creating a tax break for manufacturers with foreign operations. Under the new rules, beyond the lower rate, companies will not have to pay United States taxes on the money they earn from plants or equipment located abroad, if those earnings amount to 10 percent or less of the total investment.”
• “‘Having such a low rate on foreign income is outrageous,’ said Stephen E. Shay, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School and a Treasury Department official during the Reagan and Obama administrations. ‘It creates terrible incentives.’ […]  Such companies, Mr. Shay said, now have no reason to resist the temptation to shift some of their operations abroad, since they would end up paying half the rate they would pay in the United States.”

(BISMARCK, ND) – Yesterday in an interview on KFGO, U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell had some choice words for Congressman Kevin Cramer, who is considering jumping into the North Dakota Senate race. Congressman Cramer has recently come under fire for paying himself and his family more than $350,000 from political donations and essentially using his campaign committee as a family business.
 
State Sen. Tom Campbell apparently has some reservations about Cramer’s ethics, too. Quotes from the interview are below – and you can also listen to the full interview here.

“[B]ut no, that is a lot of money and I think it could have been used a little bit wiser […]”
 
“[I]t does raise a few flags and looks like, you know, why, was it legitimate or not? And you’ll have to ask him for that.”
 
“I would not do that.”
 
“[Y]ou’d never have to worry about that with me.”

The ethics issues don’t stop there for Congressman Cramer. This week, the Democratic-NPL called for an ethics investigation into Congressman Cramer’s use of official taxpayer resources for campaign purposes. 
 
When it comes to the Congressman’s ethics, we agree with Tom Campbell – North Dakotans deserve answers from Corrupt Cramer.

(BISMARCK, ND) – If the Republican tax bill was a football, Congressman Kevin Cramer fumbled it right on the goal line yesterday. Then he fumbled twice more for good measure.

First: Congressional reporter Matt Fuller asked Cramer about the new tax brackets that would be created in the GOP tax bill. Cramer couldn’t name them. Of course, that didn’t stop Cramer from voting for the bill just a few hours later.

“If Congressman Cramer doesn’t know the basic details of his own tax bill, how can he possibly understand how this bill will impact North Dakota taxpayers?” asked Democratic-NPL executive director Scott McNeil. “The answer is: He can’t. For Congressman Cramer, this wasn’t about helping North Dakotans get ahead—it was about political survival.”

Then: Following his vote to provide massive tax cuts for big corporations at the expense of working families, Cramer issued a statement with a widely debunked claim that “70,000 pages of convoluted tax code will be simplified to the point where most individuals will be able to fill out their taxes on a post card.”

Even Fox News doesn’t buy what Cramer is selling: “…will most Americans really be able to file their taxes on a half sheet of paper? Many professional tax preparers say no.”

Other major news sources also refute Cramer’s claim:

“The Republican tax bill does not pass the postcard test […] no taxpayer will ever see the postcard-size tax return that President Trump laid a kiss on in November as Republican leaders launched their tax overhaul effort.” –New York Times

“Their ‘postcard test’ appears to have been all but forgotten. The measure adds new layers of complexity to a tax code that is already mind-bogglingly complicated.” –USA Today

“But the code overall remains intractably complex as a sea of deductions and loopholes were preserved or tinkered with.” –Bloomberg

Finally: It turns out the new tax brackets weren’t the only things Congressman Cramer didn’t know about. Apparently, House Republicans didn’t bother to check the rules either, which is no surprise since they’re in a desperate rush to push through their sloppily crafted bill. As a result of fumbling the rules, the House will be forced to re-vote on the tax bill today.

Cramer said re-voting is like “winning the Super Bowl twice.” Last we checked, these kind of sloppy errors are more likely to occur on the junior varsity team.

“This isn’t the first time Congressman Cramer has fumbled the ball for North Dakota families, and it won’t be the last,” added McNeil. “It’s time for Cramer to take a seat on the bench.”

– 30 –

(BISMARCK, ND) – Congressman Kevin Cramer participated in a Facebook Live event Tuesday night, in which he had a hard time defending the Republican tax plan that threatens to hike taxes on tens of thousands of hardworking North Dakotans and increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion, triggering severe cuts to Medicare, crop insurance, farm programs, rural infrastructure, and many other vital services for North Dakota.
 
Cramer struggled to tap dance around the bill’s catastrophic impact on the national debt and misled about its impacts on farmers. He even cooked up some “fake news” of his own, to boot.
 
Here’s what we heard – or didn’t hear – during Cramer’s Facebook Live event:
 
BRUSHING OFF THE NATIONAL DEBT: Despite his long record as a supposed deficit hawk who once believed government spending needed to be brought under control, Congressman Cramer was remarkably flip about glaring economic analyses demonstrating that the Republican tax plan would add more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Perhaps that’s because Cramer threw out his convictions for “political survival”?

Not that you’d hear it from him, but here’s how Cramer’s tax bill would explode the national debt: 
 
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Republican tax plan would add more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Despite the GOP arguments, the Trump Administration’s Treasury Department released a report assuming economic growth more robust than many economists consider likely. Even with dynamic analysis, which attempts to account for “economic growth,” the tax bill still doesn’t pay for itself and leaves taxpayers with a one trillion dollar price tag.
 
TALL TALES FOR FARMERS: Instead of straight talk, Cramer has been known to parrot the typical GOP talking points, claiming that repealing the estate tax will benefit North Dakota family farmers – and Tuesday night was no exception. Cramer said many North Dakota farmers support the Republican tax plan because it would raise the threshold for the estate tax – and under the plan he voted for – eliminate the tax entirely. But in fact, the policy Cramer rubber-stamped helps out millionaires much more than your average North Dakota farmer:

Many farmers are voicing their strong concerns about this bill. Aaron Krauter, former head of the Farm Service Agency, points out that because the Republican tax plan spends over $1 trillion on tax cuts for millionaires, farm programs that are vital to North Dakota’s agricultural producers – like crop insurance and ag subsidies – will be subjected to deep sequestration cuts. He also took to task Congressman Cramer on the estate tax. The threshold is already set high enough to shield a vast majority of farmers and small businesses from the tax. That’s why, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), fewer than 10 North Dakota estates were required to file for the estate tax last year.

In Krauter’s own words, “Washington insiders like Ryan, McConnell and Cramer can continue trying to play farmers and ranchers for fools – but we know better and we won’t fall for it.”
 
“FAKE NEWS!!!” FOR MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES: When a constituent asked how many North Dakotans would see a tax hike under the GOP tax bill, Cramer promised that the middle-class wouldn’t see a tax hike under the GOP bill – and conveniently left out the tax increases North Dakota working families would see after ten years.

After 2027:

More than 90,000 North Dakotans would see a tax increase under the Senate Republican bill; under the House Republican bill, more than 30,000 North Dakota households would see a tax hike. Either way, Rep. Cramer voted to raise taxes on middle-class North Dakotans.

Cramer says there is a ‘different standard’ for Moore’s highly credible alleged abuse of minors because ‘you’re talking 40 years past’

But Cramer’s colleague Blake Farenthold used taxpayer dollars to settle sexual harassment lawsuit in 2014

(BISMARCK, ND) – Last night, while speaking with conservative TV pundit Chris Berg, Congressman Kevin Cramer rationalized numerous highly credible allegations of sexual misconduct against Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, saying: “you’re talking 40 years past.” That’s right – Kevin Cramer thinks Roy Moore’s alleged abuse of minors should be judged with a “different standard.”

Here are the key quotes from his interview:

“I would also say the past, when you’re talking 40 years past, versus last year, two years ago in the case of both Senator Franken and Representative Conyers, you are talking about something a little bit different, you’re talking about a different standard.”

“I think then you have to let the past be the past.”  

Even if you agree with Cramer’s bizarre standard for rationalizing allegations of sexual misconduct — and we definitely do not — why, then, is Congressman Cramer silent when it comes to recent allegations against his own House Republican colleague Blake Farenthold?

Farenthold is accused of sexually harassing his former Communications Director, who brought a lawsuit against him in 2014 saying she was fired after raising concerns about sexual harassment and a hostile work environment created by the congressman’s multiple advances and inappropriate comments. Farenthold then used nearly $85,000 in taxpayer dollars to secretly protect himself and settle the lawsuit.

If Congressman Cramer takes recent allegations so seriously, shouldn’t he call for his colleague’s resignation?