Former Vice President Mike Pence is launching a $3 million ad blitz in swing states to slam economic proposals from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — including her multitrillion-dollar tax hike.
Advancing American Freedom, a nonprofit conservative advocacy group founded by Pence, will run the digital ads in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Montana. His group also will distribute a “messaging memo” to Republican candidates competing in those states suggesting lines of political attack.
The ad campaign will highlight the economic successes of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by former President Donald Trump — and Harris’ plans to raise taxes by as much as $5 trillion if she is elected president.
“The Republican tax cuts in 2017 led to a needed economic boom here in Pennsylvania,” says Harrisburg, Pa.-based restaurant owner AnnMarie Nelms in one of the ads — before hitting Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey for voting against it.
That boom included an expansion of small businesses in central Pennsylvania and higher wages, according to Nelms, whereas she faulted Vice President Harris, 59, for wanting to “ram through the largest tax increase in American history.”
“If they raise our taxes, a lot of the small-business owners that I know won’t make it more than a year,” Nelms claimed.
Liane Taylor, a real-estate broker and administrator in the business division of Montana’s Commerce Department, says in another ad that “rent and mortgage rates were affordable” after Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and before the Dems took over the White House. Pence was Trump’s veep at the time.
“Every business that I’ve even talked to just in the last couple of days is all for making those tax cuts permanent,” Taylor said of the reductions, which end in December 2025 unlesss renewed. “This has to stop. Don’t raise my taxes. Don’t raise anybody’s taxes.”
The ad also slams Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is in a tough re-election fight against Republican challenger Tim Sheehy, for voting against the Tax Cut and Jobs Act.
New polling by AAF shows that a majority of Americans (58%) want lower taxes, including 68% of Republicans and 43% of Democrats.
In the group’s messaging memo distributed to Republican candidates in the states, the nonprofit also highlighted the all-time high of the real median household income of $78,250 under the Trump administration in 2019.
In total, real wages and salaries were $3.6 trillion higher than a Congressional Budget Office estimate on the tax cuts.
At least 5 million jobs were also added to the economy from when the Trump tax cuts were signed until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation found in a separate analysis last month that Harris’ economic agenda would cost the US 786,000 jobs while adding $4.1 trillion to the national debt.
The think tank also projected that the proposals would shrink the American long-run GDP by 2% and reduce wages by 1.2%.
