Crossen camp calls out Wied for using taxpayer money to run ads during an affordability crisis
They point out the Wied campaign is flush with cash but he's using tax dollars anyway
As the texts and calls rolled in to its office, the Rick Crossen for Congress campaign decided to speak up.
Crossen is running to unseat Tony Wied as the 8th Congressional District Representative in Washington.
What upset viewers was that Wied’s ad promoting his support for HR 1 – President Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill – was being paid for with taxpayer dollars, specifically, according to a disclaimer toward the end of the ad, from “funds authorized by the House of Representatives.”
The Crossen campaign particularly decries the fact that Wied has accrued, according to its own FEC filing, more than a half-million dollars in campaign funds, but has chosen to use taxpayer money instead.
In a press release, the Crossen campaign pointed to a Wied campaign expense report that “shows $100,618 in taxpayer money spent on ‘advertisements’ in a single quarter.”
Members of Congress are allowed to use House funds to communicate with their constituents. But Crossen campaign manager Julie Hancock argued that, while what the Wied campaign is doing is technically legal through Sept 3 (when such funds cannot be used for campaign ads), it is hypocritical and shows disregard for taxpayers.
“The crux of it is this,” Hancock said. “It's not that he's running ads, because elected officials can spend taxpayer money to communicate (with) their constituents. It's that he's spending it while telling us how much money he's put back in our pockets during an affordability crisis.”
Indeed, the ad itself twice makes reference to tax savings for workers.
“And it's the (billionaire) Uihleins and Musks and Hendrickses who have all put money into his campaign coffers,” Hancock said. “If you want to tout how great you are and say, ‘hey, look at how much money I gave you back,’ don’t do it using (your constituent's) own money. Pay for it with your own campaign funds.”
Wied's office has not yet responded to the press release.
Hancock has been keeping track of Wied’s use of House funds since last October, several months after HR 1 passed, which, notably, cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid while conferring four trillion in tax cuts. Seventy percent of that amount went to the top 20 percent of income earners and a fourth of it went to the top one percent, all according to analyses by Americans for Tax Fairness.
“What I was able to find and publicly disclose (in the press release) was they had spent $100,000, but that was at the very beginning of January this year,” she said. “So whatever money he has spent this year has not yet been disclosed.”
Crossen, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and Master Army Aviator, argued in the press release that the ad is woefully out of touch with Americans’ daily lives, and especially insensitive given that it is using their money to fund it.
“The congressman wants us to focus on the temporary tax relief the One Big Beautiful Bill gives to some people, while ignoring the extra ten or twenty dollars it is taking each time we fill up our gas tanks to get to work, or the added cost of groceries, health insurance, and any number of the everyday essentials it takes to live even a modestly comfortable life,” he said.
“Pull the ads,” he added. “Pay your own way. Better yet, come to a town hall and hear how the economy is actually going.”
