The ad states that Claire McCaskill has voted to cut federal spending for education and veterans. As for education, Senator McCaskill actually supports federal spending for schools. She has said she she wants the middleman to be eliminated to make it easier for students to receive loans. Representative Akin, in turn, has said that he wants to eliminate the entire Department of Education. So, it seems a little incredulous that Representative Akin accuses Senator McCaskill of wanting to cut spending for education, when he has stated that he would like to do the same thing if elected.
Representative Akin gives another false statement in claiming that Senator McCaskill has voted to cut federal spending for veterans. In 2008, she supported the widely popular Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act. The act gave an additional $200 monthly increase in the college aid, resulting in around $1300 for veterans who had served on active duty. The act would also support veterans with cost-of-living fees. It passed in the U.S. Senate with a vote of 92-6, and Claire McCaskill was one who voted for it.
Representative Akin has continuously attacked Senator McCaskill on appropriations she has voted on in office. He did it in an ad we talked about on October 2nd and has released statements to the press about this. For your reading benefit, we will give a quick and dirty explanation about how subsidized housing works in the federal government.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (commonly referred to as HUD) grants subsidies to some housing as a means to provide lower rent for less fortunate families. This housing, known as Section 8, is a pretty serious issue for HUD and is a major focus of their existence. HUD will examine blocks of housing and approve it for Section 8 use, then grant the owners of the buildings X-amount of federal money in order to make rent cheaper for the individuals living there. It is beneficial to both the landlords and resident, as the resident pays less to live in decent housing, while the landlords receive a guaranteed amount of money from HUD.
Senator McCaskill’s husband, Joseph Shepard, is involved in companies that deal in Section 8 housing. AP reports that Shepard drew a salary of between $400,000 and $2.6 million in his time at these companies that deal in housing. Some of these housing units, they do point out, are non-subsidized housing, and others are parts of the Section 8 program. In a financial disclosure report given to the secretary of the US Senate, Senator McCaskill does report 306 entries in the “non-publicly traded assets” section. Most of them had the description “limited partnership — real estate affordable housing.”
So there is no denying that bills Senator McCaskill voted for have, in some form, given money to her husband BUT the News Press Now article cited above says it is not clear how she would have voted for these bills (the Senator doesn’t sit on any committee’s directly involved in oversight of these) AND most of the contracts that Shepard benefitted from were initiated before Senator McCaskill was in office and would have passed renewal regardless of her vote.
After reviewing this ad, we are going to have to say that Representative Akin is pretty much lying here. There is not evidence given by Representative Akin of Senator McCaskill has voted to cut spending for education and for veterans, and while the senator has voted for bills that would in some way or another give money to her husband, these bills were initiated before she took office, so her vote didn’t really contribute much.
Also something fun to note: The AP article that Akin cites on his website and his ad was titled “Akin chides gov't money tied to McCaskill's spouse” in the AP release but somehow got changed magically to “AP: Feds paid $40M to firms tied to McCaskill's spouse“ on Akins website.
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