NBC News decided to fact-check the claim made by Ted Cruz in a recent ad of his that Beto O’Rourke voted against funding for the victims of Hurricane Harvey.
First, here’s the ad:
And here’s the fact check of that claim:
“Congressman Beto O’Rourke? So irresponsible that he even voted against Hurricane Harvey tax relief,” the ad says.
It’s true O’Rourke voted against a tax relief bill, though the claim leaves out the fact that O’Rourke did vote for several other bills that provided Harvey aid to Texans. O’Rourke voted against one bill — H.R.3823, the Disaster Tax Relief and Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2017 — that contained tax breaks for victims of the hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
As Cruz pointed out on Twitter – “Verdict: True”
O’Rourke claims the bill wasn’t a good deal for victims…
In Austin on Wednesday, O’Rourke defended his decision, saying he’d “voted for more than $90 billion in aid for Hurricane Harvey victims” and the bill Cruz is highlighting just wasn’t a good deal for victims.
He also claimed later that he didn’t like the fact that Harvey victims were getting worse tax breaks than those of Sandy and Katrina:
The bill provided help in the form of tax breaks at a much lower rate than those provided to victims of both Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina,” he wrote at the time of his initial nay vote.
The Cruz campaign responded, calling this ridiculous:
“The claim that he voted against the bill because there wasn’t as much relief as Sandy victims received must be an attempt to mask the complete ridiculousness of his vote. In fact, there was no similar provisions enacted for Sandy,” a Cruz campaign spokesman said in response.
According to NBC News, that is true:
Hurricane Sandy victims were not given such tax cuts, and lawmakers from New York and New Jersey, the states hit the hardest by the hurricane, sought to get their constituents included in the legislation. Hurricane Katrina victims did get tax cuts.
O’Rourke responded to the article, saying OOPS!
A spokesman from O’Rourke’s campaign emailed after this article was published to add that his initial blog post should have referred to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, but not Sandy.
Uh huh, yeah. Sounds like Beto had to read the article first to get his facts straight.
So in the end, Cruz’s claim that Beto voted against the funding for Harvey victims is true.
UPDATE: Math is hard. It turns out that I had Beto’s objection to the Harvey tax breaks backwards. After doing some research on those tax breaks, I realize my error. In short, for example, Katrina victims were able to deduct 100% of their hurricane-related losses from their AGI. Harvey victims had to subtract $500 from the cost of the damage but then could deduct the rest. It still seems to me to be a fairly minor reason to vote against the Harvey relief, which makes me think he had other reasons he didn’t specify. In any event, I did correct my post. As they say on the street, my bad.