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Fact Check: What you need to know about the outsourcing ad targeting Miller-Meeks

“Fancy” is a 30-second commercial that targets Dr. Mariennette Miller-Meeks, a Republican seeking to represent Iowa’s Second District in Congress.

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of political ad fact checks we are publishing heading into the November 4, 2014 general election.

“Fancy” is a 30-second commercial that targets Dr. Mariennette Miller-Meeks, a Republican seeking to represent Iowa’s Second District in Congress. The ad is paid for by the Dave Loebsack campaign.

Watch the ad - click here.

When and where it is running: The ad began running last week in the Quad-Cities.

The claim: The ad’s central claim is that Miller-Meeks supports “giving billions in special tax breaks to outsourcing corporations,” and that as the president of an organization, she partnered with a company that outsourced jobs to India.

What you should know: Let’s take the first claim first, that Miller-Meeks backed tax breaks for companies that outsource. Loebsack and the DCCC say this claim stems from her opposition to a 2010 House bill — eventually a law — that provided $26.1 billion in aid to economically hurting states during the depths of the Great Recession. The House bill was partially paid for by limiting a range of complex corporate tax provisions. Democrats said the tax breaks helped companies that outsource jobs. Republicans argued the bill amounted to a tax increase on business.

The savings from the tax changes amounted to $9.8 billion. It’s interesting to note the bigger savings in the bill was a $12 billion cut to the food stamp program.

Now, the second claim: The announcer in the ad says, “as the president of an organization, Miller-Meeks partnered with a company that outsourced hundreds of good paying jobs to India.”

At the same time, these words appear on the screen: “Mariannette Miller-Meeks company outsourced hundreds of jobs to India.”

This could mislead viewers into thinking that it was a Miller-Meeks company that was doing the outsourcing. That’s not the case.

The basis for the claim, according to the DCCC and Loebsack, is a 2007 partnership between the Iowa Medical Society and a Watertown, Mass.-based company called athenahealth Inc., a service provider that assists medical offices with administrative tasks such as billing and collections.

Miller-Meeks was president of the medical society at the time, and a news release quoted her as saying the partnership would help physicians “run more efficient practices and better serve patients."

A 2005 Boston Globe article does say athenahealth employed 200 “low wage” data entry workers in India. But the India operations have been only a small part of the company's workforce, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its 2013 annual report says out of nearly 3,000 employees at the end of last year, about 300 were in Chennai, India. The rest were in the United States. At the end of 2007, the company had 26 workers in India out of a total of 610, with the rest in the U.S., according to its 10-K.

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WQAD News 8 reporter Brittany Lewis and the Quad-City Times reporter Ed Tibbetts have partnered to check the facts behind political ads.

Watch for our Political Ad Fact Check reports Sunday nights on News 8 at 10 p.m.

Check out our continuing Political Fact Check coverage, click here.

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