Tag: Erik Paulsen

6 Ways Trump Sabotaged ACA Open Enrollment

Today is the beginning of the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment period.  Open enrollment runs through December 15 and you can sign up at www.healthcare.gov.

Democrats want everyone to know about open enrollment so all Americans know they have the opportunity to buy insurance and remain insured. Trump doesn’t want anyone to find out about open enrollment, because he doesn’t want the ACA to succeed.

Here are 6 of the worst ways Trump has worked to sabotage ACA open enrollment

  1. The Trump administration again scheduled downtime for the healthcare.gov website weekly throughout the open enrollment period.

  1. The open enrollment period is now half as long as it used to be before the Trump administration’s sabotage.

  1. The Trump administration is promoting junk insurance plans that undermine the ACA marketplace and may not provide the level of coverage people need.

  1. The Trump administration slashed millions of dollars from outreach programs and advertising aimed at enrolling people in Obamacare plans.

  1. The Trump administration limited and even abandoned state and community partnerships that have played a key role in enrolling harder-to-reach demographics.

  1. Trump’s HHS spent taxpayer resources to produce anti-ACA videos and scrubbed its website of useful consumer guidance on the ACA.

Republicans Double Down on Lies About Their Disastrous Health Care Plan

‘If we can’t trust Paulsen, Lewis, and their Republican accomplices to tell us the truth about what they’re voting on, how can we possibly trust them to put us first?’

Jason Lewis and Erik Paulsen like to claim that their votes for the American Health Care Act didn’t gut protections for pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately for the embattled Republicans, the facts tell a different story. As Lewis and Paulsen double down on their disastrous plan, Republicans like Jim Hagedorn and Pete Stauber are joining them in enthusiastically endorsing the bill their party forced through the House last year.

Responding to Republicans’ health care lies, the DFL released the following statement:

“Erik Paulsen, Jason Lewis, and their Congressional Republican allies have completely undermined our health care system by voting to raise costs and strip care from millions of Americans. Instead of owning up to their heartless health care plan, Republicans have resorted to lying to their constituents about the most basic facts.” Continue reading “Republicans Double Down on Lies About Their Disastrous Health Care Plan”

No, Dean Phillips was not involved in a sexual harassment case at one of his companies

A television ad in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District attempts to tie Democratic candidate Dean Phillips to a congressman accused of domestic abuse.

Phillips’ opponent, Republican congressman Erik Paulsen, aired the ad that starts off by saying “sleazy Keith Ellison and shady Dean Phillips, both caught up in another sexual harassment scandal,” making it appear as if the two men are involved in the same scandal.

Ellison is accused of domestic abuse by his former girlfriend. The congressman is currently running for Minnesota attorney general and has denied the allegations.

But the focus here is the claim that Phillps is “charged with ignoring sexual harassment and discrimination at his companies,” as the ad’s narrator goes on to say.

View the complete October 29 article by Samantha Putterman on the Politifact.com website here.

Donald Trump Again Endorses Erik Paulsen

On October 29, Donald Trump again tweeted his endorsement for Erik Paulsen:

Paulsen Begs Voters to Believe That He’s Still the Nice Guy

Paulsen’s unprecedented negative attacks have been condemned by sexual harassment survivors, local business leaders and area voters alike

GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen listens to DFL candidate Dean Phillips at their debate at the UBS Forum at MPR in St. Paul on Oct. 5, 2018. Credit: Tony Saunders, MPR via AP

EXCELSIOR, MN – Yesterday, Erik Paulsen released two more ads funded largely by special interest contributions to his campaign. The first was released online by his campaign and touted as Paulsen’s closing argument, representing just the second positive ad from Paulsen this cycle. True to form, however, Paulsen also released yet another dishonest and negative attack ad at the same time, which is the one currently airing widely on broadcast TV.

Paulsen has taken the fourth most special interest money of anyone in Congress, and used the money to run a dishonest and shockingly negative campaign that has been called inappropriate, reckless, false, distorted, not even in the same time zone as truth, extremely misleading, just plain false, and wildly out of context by independent journalists, community leaders, sexual harassment survivors, and Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike. Continue reading “Paulsen Begs Voters to Believe That He’s Still the Nice Guy”

Washington Post Asks Media to Shine a Light on One of Paulsen’s Favorite Lies

Erik Paulsen again caught lying, this time on pre-existing conditions; refuses to redact false statement

EXCELSIOR, MN – Today, The Washington Post took issue with how Erik Paulsen and six other Republican politicians that are mis-portraying their fact checks, and asked local media to shine a light on Paulsen’s refusal to withdraw his misleading statement.

Erik Paulsen has repeatedly – and falsely – claimed that the Washington Post had given “four Pinocchios” to anyone saying that he and other Republicans voted to gut protections for pre-existing conditions, including in a recent debate on KSTP. As the article makes clear, that was not the focus of the fact check in question, and Paulsen’s claim is not accurate.

“Facing the most competitive race of his career, Congressman Paulsen has shown his true colors,” said Zach Rodvold, campaign manager for Phillips for Congress. “His blatant disregard for the truth is beneath what we expect from a sitting member of Congress. In lying to try and save his job, he is showing Minnesotans exactly why he should be voted out. It may be the preferred approach for DC consultants and the special interest groups bankrolling his campaign, but voters have had enough.”

The Washington Post calls Paulsen’s behavior “dismaying,” asking local media to shine a light on this “brazen misappropriation” of facts while awarding Congressman Paulsen himself with “four Pinocchios” for his claim.

They Write:

Continue reading “Washington Post Asks Media to Shine a Light on One of Paulsen’s Favorite Lies”

These Republicans are misleading voters about our Obamacare fact checks

SPOILER ALERT:  Guess who else is on the list?  Our own Erik Paulsen.

Somewhere, somehow, a memo must have gone out to Republican lawmakers who voted for the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare: If you are attacked for undermining protections for people with existing health problems, jab back by saying the claim got Four Pinocchios from The Washington Post.

That’s not true. Republicans are twisting an unrelated fact check and are misleading voters. We have found at least seven politicians who have done this.

Rep. Peter J. Roskam (Illinois’s 6th District): In a debate on Oct. 22, he said: “Sean [Casten] has falsely accused me of being against protecting people with preexisting conditions and that was fact-checked by The Washington Post, who gave that four Pinocchios.”

View the complete October 29 article by Glenn Kessler on the Washington Post website here.

Rep. Erik Paulsen needs love from women, gets Trump’s instead

Try as he might to distance himself from Trump, the two are brothers from other mothers. Credit: CityPages files

Rep. Erik Paulsen and Donald Trump may seem like opposites. One is bellicose, needy for the roar of his partisans, willing to say whatever rumbles from his ample buttocks. The other owns a Scandoid reserve, preferring quiet audiences with likeminded men of leisure, where there’ll be no uncomfortable questions.

But dig past the surface to their pursuits in Washington, and they are brothers from other mothers.

Both take a morals-optional approach to personal advancement. Both profess Christianity while giving their hearts to Citibank Jesus. And both have a chameleon quality as Valiant Fighters for the Middle Class, though you’d need a squadron of backhoes to find evidence that either ever threw a punch on your behalf.

View the complete October 29 article by Pete Kotz on the CityPages website here.

Erik Paulsen, Dean Phillips campaigns dispute ads, campaign finance

As Election Day nears, the competitive race for the Third Congressional District seat is becoming increasingly contentious.

Rep. Erik Paulsen and challenger Dean Phillips debated late week on “Almanac.” Credit: Mark Vancleave, Star Tribune, file

U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen faced fresh criticism Friday for a TV ad critical of Democratic opponent Dean Phillips, while Phillips threw in $1.3 million of his own money as he tries unseat Paulsen.

As the Nov. 6 election nears, the competitive race for the Third Congressional District seat is becoming increasingly contentious as Paulsen, a five-term congressman from Eden Prairie, fights for re-election. Phillips, a distillery heir and businessman from Deephaven, is trying to become the first Democrat to hold the seat since 1961.

On Friday, Paulsen was criticized again for making a sexual harassment case part of his campaign. Lori Peterson, a lawyer who represented seven women who sued Allina Health in 2007 over sexual harassment, sent a note Friday to Paulsen’s campaign manager demanding the team stop using the women’s story in the TV ads, which call Phillips “shady” and charge that he “did nothing” to combat the harassment when he was on Allina’s board of directors from 2005 to 2011.

View the complete October 26 article by Kelly Smith on the Star Tribune website here.

Paulsen’s Lies Not Limited to TV: Debunked Claims Hit Mailboxes Too

A dark secret: Paulsen and his special interest patrons are waging a disinformation campaign in MN03 mailboxes

EXCELSIOR, MN – Congressman Erik Paulsen’s coordinated negative television campaign has earned him unprecedented scrutiny from local fact checkers, but another tactic has earned him less scrutiny, with dozens of special interest-funded mailers containing the same objectively false claims landing in mailboxes across the Third District.

“Voters in Minnesota’s Third District have been subjected to a barrage of objectively false claims on TV and in their mailboxes thanks to Erik Paulsen and his special interest funders,” said Zach Rodvold, campaign manager for Phillips for Congress. “The pieces are too numerous to track, and have no regard for fact or truth — oftentimes coming from dark money groups who operate with no transparency. Congressman Paulsen and his special interest patrons have shown an unrelenting commitment to buying this election, and embracing Donald Trump’s propensity for lies and personal slander on the campaign trail as much as they have his policies in Washington.”

Congressman Paulsen has raised over $2.7 million from PACs – the fourth most of anyone in Congress – and used the money to run an unprecedentedly negative campaign that has been called inappropriate, reckless, false, distorted, not even in the same time zone as truth, extremely misleading, just plain false, and wildly out of context by independent journalists, community leaders, sexual harassment survivors, and Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike. While the TV ads have been the subject of scrutiny by independent fact checkers, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of deceptive direct mail has gone unnoticed.

Here are just some of the outrageous claims being delivered to mailboxes across the district:

Continue reading “Paulsen’s Lies Not Limited to TV: Debunked Claims Hit Mailboxes Too”