The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently released an ad, attacking Republican Keith Rothfus in his bid to defeat incumbent Democrat Mark Critz. Lying about the Taxpayer Protection Pledge isn’t a new tactic for the DCCC, nor is ignoring the fact that independent organizations have called them out on their fallacious claims.

The DCCC suggests that as a Pledge signer, Keith Rothfus has promised to “protect tax breaks for companies that ship 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 the DCCC injury, the non-partisan FactCheck.org rated the attacks against the Pledge as “blatantly false.”

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.

Despite the DCCC’s pledged financial support for the Critz campaign, he should denounce this proven false claim so that both he and Rothfus can focus on what Pennsylvania voters care most about: curbing rising gas prices, unsustainable government spending, and the looming tax hikes that take effect on January 1^st of next year.

“I applaud Keith Rothfus for taking the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Taxpayers in Pennsylvania have clearly shown their displeasure with tax-and-spend policies coming out of Washington, policies that the DCCC champions,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “The most recent false claims by this group further demonstrates the difficult time national Democrats are going to have defending the Democrat ‘plan’ for economic recovery: higher taxes and more government spending,” continued Norquist.

[PDF of Press Release]

Posted by Paul Blair on Friday, September 7, 2012 4:44 PM EDT

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