Dem Senate campaign arm hits GOP lawmakers over Trump tax law

The Democratic Senate campaign arm is launching digital ads targeting seven Senate Republicans for their votes in favor of President Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul.

The five-figure ad campaign by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) takes particular aim at a provision in the law that raised the amount of taxes some military families pay on their survivor benefits.

The GOP targets are Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Martha McSally (Ariz.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), David Perdue (Ga.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and John Cornyn (Texas), all of whom are facing reelection in 2020.{mosads}

“Cory Gardner voted for a tax law that HIKED taxes on Colorado Gold Star families, forcing some military families to pay thousands of dollars more in taxes on their survivor benefits,” one Facebook ad reads. The ads were first obtained by The Hill.

The tax increase in question specifically affects military spouses who signed over survivor benefits to their children.

Before the 2017 law was passed, survivor benefits allocated to children were taxed at the parent’s rate. But due to a change in the so-called kiddie tax, which has to do with taxing the “unearned income” of children at a higher rate, such benefits can be taxed at a rate of up to 37 percent.

That some Gold Star families had seen taxes rise on their earned benefits under the 2017 law was first reported last month by Task & Purpose, a website that focuses on military news.

Republicans have said that they had initially sought to simplify the kiddie tax, and that the increase for Gold Star families had been an unintended consequence of that.

A bipartisan bill introduced earlier this month by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) seeks to amend the tax code so that benefits signed over to the children of fallen service members would be taxed as earned income.

Nearly three dozen senators, including Collins, Tillis and Cornyn, have co-sponsored the measure, though the other four lawmakers targeted by the DSCC ads have yet to sign onto it.

Democrats are eager to make gains in the Senate in 2020 after a tough electoral map in last year’s midterm elections, and Republicans like Gardner and Collins are among their top targets.

The DSCC’s latest ad campaign suggests that Democrats are hoping to seize on the 2017 tax law, which has struggled with low popularity ratings. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this month found that just 27 percent of U.S. adults approve of the law.

“Republican senators voted to give tax handouts to wealthy CEOs and huge corporate special interests while hiking taxes on families who have lost a loved one in military service,” Stewart Boss, a spokesman for the DSCC, said.

“We’ll make sure voters don’t forget that these vulnerable GOP senators helped pass a reckless law forcing Gold Star families to pay higher taxes on survivor benefits, and that many of them are not even working to pass the bipartisan bill to clean up this mess and fix this cruel penalty.”