Mary Burke
We’re back with the latest installment of You Be the Judge, where our team of independent fact-checkers looks at a claim, puts it in context, goes beyond the carefully worded claim to break down the issues, presents all the facts and then lets you be the judge on whether it holds water.
With just under five weeks to go before Election Day, “silly season” is officially upon us and the rhetoric and outlandish statements are really ramping up. This week’s claim by Gov. Scott Walker certainly brings the drama—the ad in question opens with a wailing siren and flames before stating that Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke “supports Obamacare unequivocally and wants to expand it.”
Mary Burke on Obamacare
Now, even given the problems with the rollout of President Obama’s signature health care law, it’s no big surprise that a Democrat running for statewide office would express support for at least the most popular parts of the law—provisions like allowing kids to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until they are 26, requiring health insurance plans to cover the cost of preventive care like well-child exams and breast and cervical cancer screenings, and preventing coverage denials based on pre-existing conditions.
But we can’t find any record of Mary Burke saying she supported the law “unequivocally.” Nor could the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact team when they examined this claim, yet somehow ended up rating it “Half True.”
The Walker camp offered up as the only background for their claim an MSNBC.com article that included the sentence, “Burke is an unequivocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act and wants to expand Medicaid in the state, which Walker has refused to do.” But that’s not a direct quote from Mary Burke, or from anyone else for that matter. That’s just one reporter’s characterization, a fact that PolitiFact correctly points out.
In fact, while expressing support for the popular parts of the law, Burke has said that the law “certainly” has its problems and that “it needs to be changed if it’s not working.” In our book, that doesn’t qualify as “unequivocal” support.
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And what about the “wants to expand it” portion of the claim? That one doesn’t appear to hold water either. To be sure, Burke has expressed support for accepting federal funds to strengthen the state’s BadgerCare program—just like 29 other states, including several with Republican governors, have opted to do. But that’s not an “expansion” of the law. That’s carrying out provisions of a law that was passed by Congress and upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Expansion, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is the act of becoming bigger or of making something bigger. Again, not the case here. Burke simply supports enacting provisions of the law as passed.
And there’s one other point of contention on this claim. Walker’s ad refers back to PolitiFact National’s 2013 “Lie of The Year,” which was President Obama saying about the Affordable Care Act that, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
The way the Walker ad is pieced together, with the president’s claim followed by a video clip of Mary Burke saying that the law doesn’t mean the government can tell you which doctor to go to or which plan to have, attempts to give the impression that Burke is supporting the “Lie of the Year.”
The only problem with that is that the video footage they use of Burke is from 2007, when then-Sen. Obama’s health care proposal—not yet even referred to as Obamacare—included a provision that allowed people to keep their doctors regardless of which health plan they chose. That provision was later stripped from the version of the law that was eventually passed and has become known as Obamacare. Lies aren’t applied retroactively; this just doesn’t hold up.
So, where does this leave us on Walker’s claim? The record indicates that, like 29 governors, both Republican and Democratic, Mary Burke supports accepting federal funds for Medicaid that would allow Wisconsin to insure more people at a lower cost to the taxpayers. The record also shows that Burke was an early supporter of health care reform and, while open to making changes, has been supportive of the popular provisions of what has become known as the Affordable Care Act. But is she an “unequivocal supporter” of the “Lie of the Year?” You be the judge.
