Recent coverage of the North Carolina Senate race has said the trending topic is education. For Democrats, that means bashing North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R), the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, on his handling of the state’s education budget. One conservative group, however, recently tried to counter those attacks by linking education policy to an all too familiar Republican target: Obamacare.
An ad by the Koch brothers-backed outside group Freedom Partners Action Fund attacks Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) on education policy via Obamacare. The ad features Brenda Little of Greenville, North Carolina, a public school teacher who describes how she received a letter informing her that substitute teachers would have to cut back their hours because of Obamacare.
Watch the ad here:
The ad is referring to letters that several school districts and other employers distributed earlier this year that blamed Obamacare for cutting hours for part-time positions. The health care law said that employers are required to provide health insurance to any employee who works more than 30 hours a week; many organizations reacted to this by cutting hours rather than increasing coverage.
It’s not just Republicans who are making education-policy themed attacks. Hagan’s campaign and Democratic leaning organizations like Women Vote, which is connected to EMILY’s List, have been attacking Tillis over education cuts he oversaw as leader of the state House.
“Speaker Thom Tillis cut almost $500 million from education, causing crowded classrooms and forcing teachers to pay out-of-pocket for school supplies, while Tillis protected tax breaks for yachts and jets,” an ad from Women Vote said.
Politifact noted that Tillis, as speaker of North Carolina’s House, actually helped pass a budget that raised spending on comparison compared to prior years. But the $500 million claim comes from the fact that that budget fell short of what was requested, particularly to cover the costs of rising employee benefits.
North Carolina is also reportedly missing out on $51 billion worth of federal payments over the next ten years if lawmakers in the state don’t expand Medicaid through Obamacare, according to a report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute. Tillis has promoted the fact that he helped pass a bill to prevent the state from expanding Medicaid.
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