McSally Chose Her Big Insurance And Pharma Donors Over The Health Of Arizona Families
By voting for the disastrous American Health Care Act, McSally put her pharmaceutical and health insurance company donors over the health of Arizona families.
The AHCA would cut taxes for pharmaceutical companies, with the benefits going to wealthy shareholders and other investors. McSally has received over $39,000 from the pharmaceutical industry during her career.
The AHCA would repeal taxes on insurance companies, and allow insurance companies to reduce the generosity of insurance while increasing deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. It would also give a tax break to insurance company executives. McSally has received over $44,000 from health insurance companies over her career.
But Arizona families struggling with health care costs wouldn’t fare nearly as well under the bill as big health insurance and pharma companies. The AHCA would gut protections for preexisting conditions and impose an “age tax” on older Americans that would allow insurers to charge them five times more than younger adults.
By Supporting The Republican Tax Plan, McSally Sold Out Arizona To Her Big Special Interest Donors
McSally supported the Republican tax plan– a massive giveaway to corporations and the wealthy, including slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Wells Fargo, one of McSally’s biggest donors, saved $3 billion thanks to the bill, and Bank of America, another big McSally donor, saw their income tax fall $1.8 billion compared to the same time in 2017.
The Republican tax plan also allowed Big Pharma to reap “huge rewards”—just 5 companies were estimated to have saved over $6 billion from the bill. McSally has received over $39,000 from the pharmaceutical industry.
The bill was great for McSally’s donors, but devastating for the middle class. Not only would the middle class see their taxes increase, the bill would also threaten massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare—as a result of $1.9 trillion it would add to the deficit.
Dark Money Groups, Megadonors, And Big Corporate Special Interests Have Spent Big To Prop Up McSally Because They Know She’s On Their Side
McSally represents the worst of big money Washington politics. She has earned the support of big dark money groups, mega-donors and big corporate special interests because they know that McSally is on their side.
McSally’s political career has been propped up with millions of secretive, corporate special interest money. A group called Defend Arizona spent nearly $2 million supporting her in 2018, but their true donors were masked with massive donations from secretive, opaque LLCs. The donors we do know about were billionaire business tycoons, including one who said that rich people didn’t have enough influence on politics.
One of McSally’s biggest boosters was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a tool for corporate special interests and one of the worst examples of dark money invading our elections.
The Kochs and their dark money network readily opened their wallets to make sure McSally got elected. She has received over $30,000 from patriarch David Koch and their conglomerate, Koch Industries. And Koch-linked groups, fueled with dark money, spent nearly $800,000 boosting McSally over her career.
McSally is the darling of the country’s biggest special interest mega-donors, who have readily supported McSally because they know she’ll protect their bottom line. Sheldon Adelson, Ken Griffin, the Mercers, the Ricketts, the Schwabs, Paul Singer, and Bernard Marcus have contributed thousands of dollars to make sure McSally stays in office.
McSally Has Repeatedly Failed To Follow Basic Disclosure And Follow Campaign Finance Law
McSally has made a name for herself by failing to follow basic campaign finance disclosure rules, leading some to speculate whether she’s just inattentive and incompetent or actually deliberately misleading the public.
Between 2012 and 2015, McSally’s campaign received 14 letters from the FEC pointing out errors and omissions in her reports. Those errors included everything from donations that may have exceeded contribution limits, not enough information on expenditures, and problems with summary totals for donations.
McSally also allegedly violated campaign laws by spending money on her U.S. Senate campaign before she was an actual candidate, and she allegedly improperly fundraised for both her House and Senate campaign committees simultaneously.
An FEC audit found that McSally’s campaign had failed to disclose the employer and occupation information for and received excessive contributions from hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donations.
One of McSally’s biggest problems was disclosing the employer and occupation information of her donors, denying Arizonans the right to know who might be influencing their representative. In the first two quarters of 2015, McSally did not report the required employer and occupation of more than half her individual donors, a mistake she clearly didn’t learn from: over the whole 2016 cycle, she failed to report the information for 7,838 itemized individual donations—over 42% of those contributions.
The FEC repeatedly rebuked McSally for those failures, and local papers excoriated McSally for failing to commit to transparency. The Arizona Republic even stated that “this many failures begins to look intentional.”
