Ad is misleading about congressman

Political campaign ads may be slickly appealing, but don't count on them to be truthful. Case in point is Peter Roskam's latest television ad, sponsored by the American Chemistry Council, a $100-million-a-year trade and lobbying organization that in 2009 protested the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The group's former senior director of regulatory science policy is now the EPA's deputy assistant director.

The ACC ad encourages us to "thank Peter Roskam" for being "instrumental in cutting taxes for the middle class" - a dubious claim on its face and especially in Illinois, where Roskam's Tax Cuts and Job Act now limits income tax deductions for state, local and property taxes to $10,000.

And as for the ad's smooth assurance that Roskam fixed "the broken tax code" to enable businesses to "reinvest in American workers," only four percent of workers have actually received bonuses or raises as a result of the tax bill - and two-thirds of those have been an isolated occurrence.

The final claim, that Roskam is working to make our health care system "more accessible and affordable for everyone," is the most fanciful of all. He is, after all, the man who supported the failed American Health Care Act of 2017 - which would have stripped health insurance from 23 million Americans - and voted 60 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act or weaken its provisions.

My advice if this ad comes on while you're watching TV? Turn the channel.

Sophie Bair

Glen Ellyn