Capitol Alert
Fact check: This ad about Tom McClintock gets more than one thing wrong
Congressman Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove holds one of the safest Republican seats in California. But he has a well-funded 2020 challenger in businesswoman Brynne Kennedy, who has released her first ad attacking McClintock’s stances on Medicare, Social Security, COVID-19 relief and masks.
Here’s how her statements square against McClintock’s record:
Narrator:
“Tom McClintock. You never know what will come out of his mouth. He says seniors are “lusting” after Social Security. He’s voted against the Families First coronavirus relief package, saying we were trying to “game the system.” He’s voted to end Medicare and attacked efforts to lower prescription drug costs.
Now, he says he won’t even wear a mask to protect the health and safety of those around him. Wear your mask, Tom — because we never know what’s coming out of your mouth.”
Analysis:
McClintock didn’t say seniors were lusting after Social Security. He wrote this in a Thousand Oaks Chronicle article in 1979: “The generation of the 1930s established Social Security as an equitable system of retirement benefits, but the Old and New Establishments turned their lusting eyes upon it as another cornucopia of riches for lavishing benefits upon themselves.”
In more recent statements, McClintock has advocated significant changes in Social Security, such as raising the retirement age, which he helped accomplish in the 2013 budget. He also wants to offer new enrollees the option to “invest a portion of their Social Security taxes themselves for higher returns,” McClintock told The Sacramento Bee in 2018.
McClintock was one of 40 lawmakers and the only California congressman — including the five other Republican members of the state’s national delegation — to vote against the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act. He characterized the bill as a threat to economic recovery, telling The Sacramento Bee that the paid medical leave guaranteed under the act “opens the door for anyone who wants to game the system.”
Also, McClintock did not vote to end Medicare. McClintock has voted to advance numerous budget resolutions that include significant cuts and other changes to Medicare, such as the so-called Ryan budget in 2011. Some Democrats said at the time that the budget would “end Medicare” — an unqualified statement that Politifact named its 2011 Lie of the Year. Ryan’s proposal would have replaced a single-payer system with vouchers for private insurance, constituting an end to Medicare “as we know it,” some media outlets and Democrats said at the time — but not doing away with the program altogether.
On prescription drugs, McClintock said in December that price controls will only serve to make lifesaving pharmaceuticals unavailable to the American public. He voted against a resolution that would require the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicare, to negotiate prices for up to 250 commonly-used drugs. Over the past decade, he has voted for multiple budget resolutions that would reopen the Medicare “donut hole,” a gap in prescription drug coverage that increases out-of-pocket costs for seniors.
McClintock has said he doesn’t think masks should be mandatory in public and has refused to wear a face covering in Congress, Bloomberg News reported in June, arguing that House leadership cannot require masks in order to participate in committee meetings. He now wears masks “whenever required,” according to his spokesperson Jennifer Cressy.
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