In a blatant attempt to mislead the voters of TX-14, the Nick Lampson campaign recently released a false attack ad against Randy Weber for signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Lying about the Taxpayer Protection Pledge isn’t a new tactic for the Democrats, nor is ignoring the fact that independent organizations have called them out on their fallacious claims.

The TV ad suggests that as a Pledge signer, Randy Weber has signed a pledge to “protect special tax breaks for corporations that send American jobs overseas.” Unfortunately, when the same claim was levied against Pledge signers in 2010, the Associated Press labeled the attack as “one of the wildest claims of the 2010 campaign.” Adding insult to injury, the non-partisan FactCheck.org rated the attacks against the Pledge as “blatantly false.”

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge that Randy Weber signed reads as follows:

I, Randy Weber, pledge to the taxpayers of the 14th District of the state of Texas, and to the American People that I will:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and

TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing taxes.

As FactCheck.org has noted, “[The Pledge] leaves ample room for the elimination of any number of special tax breaks so long as the overall level of taxation is not increased. To claim that this ‘protects’ a particular provision is simply untrue.” The overall goal of Pledge signers is to reduce the size of the government by focusing on spending alone.

When the DCCC continued with the same attack against Republicans in 2010, another independent fact-checking organization weighed in. To the accusation that the Pledge “protects” companies who ship jobs overseas, Politifact noted that the claim about the Pledge included a “spurious connection” that requires a “huge leap of logic,” concluding that the DCCC’s claim was “False.”

“I applaud Randy Weber for making a personal, written commitment to oppose efforts to increase taxes on Texas taxpayers. Taxpayers everywhere are fed up with the tax-and-spend policies coming out of Washington, DC” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “The most recent false claims by Lampson further demonstrate the difficult time Democrats are going to have defending the Democrat ‘plan’ for economic recovery: higher taxes and more government spending,” continued Norquist.

View PDF here

Posted by Adam Radman on Friday, October 12, 2012 4:48 PM EDT

To follow Adam Radman's RSS feed click here. To follow them on Twitter, their handle is @adamradman