Tomorrow, February 29, Iowans across the state will celebrate Leap Year by taking in a Leap Day concert in Waterloo, a potluck dance party in Ames, or a “Who Hops?” competition at the O’Brien County Conservation.
But Senator Joni Ernst – the third-most unpopular senator in the country – is memorializing Leap Year in a more unsettling way: trying to leap over her record of voting time and again to undermine the health coverage and services that Iowans rely on. Health care is the number one issue in this election, and Ernst knows her five years siding with Mitch McConnell and Big Pharma and Big Insurance special interests pose a grave threat to her re-election.
Iowans won’t be fooled by Ernst’s election-year reversals. Here are a few of the many ways that endangered Senator Ernst is trying to leap over her real record on health care:
- Senator Ernst made an eleventh-hour flip flop trying to rewrite her long record of blocking meaningful prescription drug reform, after she cashed in $120,000 from Big Pharma corporate PACs.
- Senator Ernst has refused to provide answers to Iowans after she was caught secretly telling her DC donors that Medicare and Social Security spending is “out of control.”
- Senator Ernst’s illicit dark money group, “Iowa Values,” is running a dizzying ad to distort her record of voting to dismantle the health care Iowans rely on – all while refusing to answer allegations of breaking campaign finance law by illegally coordinating with Ernst’s campaign.
- Senator Ernst has tried to jump past her real record on pre-existing conditions: voting to defend toxic “junk” insurance plans that can deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, refusing to oppose the Republican lawsuit to end protections for pre-existing conditions, and bragging about her “courage” to gut coverage for Iowans with pre-existing conditions.