This election season, WESA and PublicSource are analyzing the political advertising you’re seeing on air and online. Look for Spot Check on Thursdays.
The spot
“Stop Reckless Spending” is a 30-second television ad that criticizes U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, for his votes in favor of President Joe Biden’s domestic spending priorities. The ad claims that “wasteful” spending authorized by congressional Democrats and Biden is responsible for high inflation in recent years and that Casey voted to allow “illegals” to collect federal stimulus checks.
When did it launch? Aug. 6
How many airings? 279 times in Pittsburgh, and more than 1,000 across Pennsylvania, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising.
Who's paying? One Nation, a so-called “dark money” nonprofit group whose tax status exempts it from disclosing its funding sources. Public IRS filings show the group is led by Steven Law, who was deputy secretary of labor under President George W. Bush, and it has a track record of supporting Republicans running for Senate.
How much? $1.7 million, a fraction of One Nation’s $18 million spend on other ads with similar messages in Pennsylvania, according to AdImpact.
The claims
The ad starts by asserting that the country is experiencing a “cost-of-living crisis” and claims that Casey’s legislative votes have caused prices to rise. This claim is attributed to an Associated Press article from March 2022. It’s not entirely clear which AP story it draws from, but that month AP reported an inflation rate approaching 8%, listing a range of causes including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, high consumer spending, wage hikes, supply shortages and government spending driven by the pandemic.
A narrator explains that Casey voted with President Joe Biden “98% of the time,” including on trillion-dollar spending bills the ad calls wasteful. These statements are attributed to U.S. Senate voting records.
The ad also says Casey voted to let “illegals” take tax dollars in the form of COVID relief checks; this part is laid over video footage of apparent chaotic scenes at the southern border side-by-side with a video of Casey putting a piece of paper into his pocket.
The ad does not mention Casey’s opponent in the November election, Republican Dave McCormick, and rather than urging voters one way or another, it advocates for the passage of Senate Bill 575. That bill, the Fight Inflation Through Balanced Budgets Act, was introduced in March 2023 and is sponsored by Republican Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana, Ted Cruz of Texas, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Rick Scott of Florida. It aims to curb federal deficits by allowing senators to block imbalanced budgets and cost overruns, and has not received a vote.
The facts
The ad correctly notes that Casey has voted with Biden almost all of the time. ABC News analyzed Senate votes on which Biden took a clear stance in 2023 and found that Casey voted with the president 99% of the time. That number was 98% in the first two years of Biden’s presidency, FiveThirtyEight found, including votes for Biden’s signature initiatives on COVID relief, infrastructure and climate change.
Whether those votes caused the abnormally high rates of inflation felt during the past few years is a more nuanced question — and many economists say it can’t be pinned on Senate actions.
Melanie Zaber, a Pittsburgh-based economist at the RAND Corporation, said academic evidence shows the American Rescue Plan had a “small role” in increasing inflation, but it was not the primary cause.
“It’s pretty well established in the research community that supply chain issues and energy costs related to the war in Ukraine are tied to inflation globally,” Zaber said.
Microchip shortages that plagued the automotive industry also played a big role, she said.
Economists wrote this month in a column published by the Brookings Institution that the majority of the COVID-era inflation spike was caused by supply-related factors, such as supply chain and shipping delays that began during the height of the pandemic.
“The argument that policy stimulus was excessive is weak,” the economists wrote.
Not all economists have absolved Biden’s policies (and therefore Casey’s votes) in the inflation blame game. Some experts say the U.S. would have experienced high inflation regardless, but the spending packages pushed the rate up, perhaps to the tune of 3 added percentage points.
Casey and some other Democrats have gone on the offensive against claims like the ones in this ad, arguing that corporate price gouging is to blame for the inflation surge.
But researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco poured cold water on that theory in May, when they wrote in an economic letter that aggregate markups stayed “essentially flat” since the start of the post-COVID recovery, except in a few areas such as cars and fuel.
“As such, rising markups have not been a main driver of the recent surge and subsequent decline in inflation during the current recovery,” the researchers wrote.
Zaber said there’s little evidence supporting the notion that so-called “greedflation” is a driving force behind the recent inflation, and that it “pales in comparison” to supply chain issues and energy costs.
The Casey campaign defended the senator’s stance, pointing to reports showing corporate profits growing faster than inflation and a study from a progressive think tank that said corporate profits accounted for about half of the inflation surge.
The ad’s claim that Casey voted to let illegal immigrants collect COVID relief is attributed to his vote on a proposed amendment to the American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA]. The amendment, offered by Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, was for the purpose of “preventing legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to receive Economic Impact Payments.” Casey was one of 42 Democrats who voted against the amendment; eight Democrats joined 50 Republicans in approving it.
The vast majority of undocumented immigrants were ineligible to receive COVID stimulus payments, in part because they could be issued only to people with valid Social Security numbers.
A One Nation spokesperson wrote in an email to PublicSource and WESA that ARPA gave funding to states with broad discretion over its use, and some of those states cut checks to residents who were ineligible for federal checks due to immigration status.
PublicSource's access to AdImpact data on political advertising is made possible through a partnership with WESA and support from The Heinz Endowments.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
