"Wrong Way Robin" Claims Examined

The mud-slinging is heating up in the U.S. Senate race between Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan. On September 21st, Missouri Republican Representative Roy Blunt launched a new advertisement aimed at Carnahan. The advertisement, titled, “Wrong Way Robin” attempts to further highlight the “Obama-heavy” agenda of Carnahan.
The advertisement claims, “Carnahan supports the $814 billion failed stimulus spending.” According to the News Tribune, “Carnahan contends that the $814 billion economic stimulus act has helped.” However, as a Republican Watchdog, I had to dig a little deeper. Roy Blunt is not as clean as he may seem on this claim. According to PoliticMo, “Before Blunt was against it, Blunt was for a 2008 bill authorizing up to $700 billion to shore up banks and other institutions.” Thus, Carnahan does support the stimulus package, but at one time, so did Blunt. The next claim made by Blunt’s advertisement points to Carnahan’s “support for Government run healthcare and $500 billion in Medicare cuts.” According to an article from Politicalcorrection, “Obamas plan leaves in place the private healthcare system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured.” Another article by mediamattersaction explains that, “In reality, the health care bill strengthens Medicare without cutting seniors’ benefits and premiums will go down or stay the same for the majority of Americans.” Thus, Carnahan supports a bill that does not favor “government-run healthcare” and will not make $500 billion in cuts. The Watchdogs find this claim by Blunt to be false and misleading. The last claim made by the advertisement states that Carnahan supports an energy plan that will “double your utility bill.” Blunt is speaking to Carnahan supporting a “cap-and-trade energy tax” which would place fees on carbon emissions. In fact-checking this last statement, an article from the Washington Examiner explained how Carnahan did say that “she could support some kind of cap-and-trade energy policy, so long as it didn’t unduly penalize consumers.” Thus, Carnahan did put support behind a cap-and-trade energy tax, but never made a solid statement. She never put support into a system that would “double the utility bill” or cost “32,000 Missouri jobs”. It appears that Blunt may have stretched the truth for this statement.