“..fraught with hyperbole, supposition and misinformation”

Bangor Daily and Portland Press Herald join other outlets in calling out Team Gideon’s false ads

Members of the press:

Two new independent fact-checks from the Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News examined a TV ad from a group supporting Sara Gideon - and found it to be FALSE AND MISLEADING.

Team Gideon’s ads have been consistently and frequently found false by national and local fact-checkers. Non-partisan fact checkers with the Washington Post, FactCheck.org, NewsCenter Maine, and WMTW have already found that Sara Gideon and her allies are often not telling the truth.

Portland Press Herald: Super PAC packs distortions into ad attacking Susan Collins

“The ad strongly and wrongly suggests Collins’ support for working Mainers has changed because of her vote on this law and her acceptance of corporate campaign funds, but it fails to make that case when the full facts behind the claims are disclosed.

The ad, like others appearing during this election cycle, depends heavily on distorting a handful of facts while drawing on far-reaching suppositions and glaring omissions to make a case that is ultimately not factual.”

Bangor Daily News: Ad Watch: Susan Collins actually voted to cut most Mainers’ taxes -- for now

“A new ad from a Democratic super PAC says U.S. Sen. Susan Collins voted to increase taxes on middle-class families. But most Mainers actually saw taxes go down due to the 2017 Republican tax law backed by Collins, though it was set up in a way that low- and middle-income families could see their taxes go up later.”

Both of these fact checks show that a persistent claim by Gideon and her allies -- that the 2017 tax cuts were harmful to Maine -- is completely baseless. The facts are clear that the tax cuts were a significant help for middle- and lower- income Mainers.

According to the Press Herald's fact check:

"While it’s true the tax law slashed corporate taxes, it also cut taxes for middle-income Mainers and eliminated federal income taxes entirely for households earning less than $24,000 a year. The law also provided a federal tax cut to the 72 percent of Maine tax filers who use the standard deduction, nearly doubling the deduction amount for both single and joint filers while also allowing up to a $10,000 deduction for taxes paid to local and state government."

Among key components of the law is a doubling of the dependent child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 and an expanded eligibility for that credit allowing single filers earning up to $200,000 and joint filers earning up to $400,000 to still be eligible for the credit for dependent children, which was previously phased out at $100,000 and $200,000 respectively.

The law also allows up to $1,400 of the credit to be refunded to tax filers who owe no federal income tax."