HELENA — MTN is continuing our “Truth Be Told” series, taking a closer look at some of the claims you may have seen in the flurry of political advertising around Montana’s U.S. Senate race between Republican Tim Sheehy and Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
Republicans are putting illegal immigration and border issues at the center of many of their ads this election cycle. One recent joint ad — paid for by Sheehy’s campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the national GOP campaign arm currently chaired by Sen. Steve Daines — seeks to tie Tester to Vice President Kamala Harris and to what it calls “radical” policies.
“Jon Tester voted to give taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants,” the ad’s voiceover says. It continues on to say, “Jon Tester votes like a radical Democrat.”
MTN is partnering with the nonpartisan website PolitiFact, which is fact checking campaign ads like these. While this ad didn’t specifically cite a vote, PolitiFact chief correspondent Louis Jacobson said Sheehy’s campaign is referencing an amendment to a budget bill, back in 2013.
“This specific vote from 2013 — a colleague of mine, a few days before I heard this one, did a fact check and found a similar result that was used against Sen. Sherrod Brown, who's a Democrat in Ohio who’s endangered and running for another term.”
Tester, Brown and other Democrats voted against an unsuccessful amendment, proposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, who later became attorney general under President Donald Trump.
Sessions’ amendment would “establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to achieve savings by prohibiting illegal immigrants or illegal immigrants granted legal status from qualifying for federally subsidized health care.” It was defeated 43-56, on a nearly party-line vote.
Jacobson said existing law already meant people in the U.S. illegally weren’t able to claim those benefits, and it would have taken a separate bill to actually change that — regardless of what happened with this amendment. Based on that, PolitiFact ruled the ad’s claim was false.
Jacobson said this amendment was an example of a process called a “vote-a-rama,” when Congress votes on a long series of proposed amendments to a budget bill.
Because of the rules of the budget reconciliation process, the amendments typically don’t make policy changes — but they often do get lawmakers to vote on controversial subjects.
“What both parties try to do is to get the other party to do something embarrassing, to sort of force them to take a vote that can be used as campaign ad fodder,” said Jacobson.
The federal government says, today, only “lawfully present immigrants” are allowed to apply for federally funded programs like Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or to get coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. In some cases, there may be stricter requirements.
Tester’s campaign responded to the ad in a statement to MTN.
“Tim Sheehy and his out-of-state billionaire backers have to try to turn Jon Tester into something he’s not, because they can’t beat who he is,” said spokesperson Monica Robinson. “Sheehy will continue to lie about Jon’s record to distract from his own policy positions that hurt Montanans and his lies about who he is.”
You can find all of our Truth Be Told stories on our MTN websites — including one focusing on an ad from Tester, criticizing Sheehy’s stance on abortion.
