This week, Working Families Win Iowa kicked off its 2012 bird-dogging season at a campaign event in Mason City Iowa hosted by Congressman Steve King of Iowa’s new 4th congressional district.  When Working Families Win organizer Chris Schwartz called out Rep. King on his false assertions that the President's new health care law would decrease health insurance coverage by 30 million, King became agitated and unable to handle the facts, calling in back up to have Schwartz thrown out of the event.  See what all the fuss is about here.

Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum thinks the biggest problem with the nation’s health care system is that patients don’t pay enough.  Responding to a series of questions from a WFW activist during a campaign stop in Iowa, the former Pennsylvania senator claimed that Americans “over utilize” health services because they “have no idea what it costs—and they don’t care!”  Falsely claiming that under the federal Affordable Care Act “government gets to decide your access to care,” Santorum advocated repealing the AFA and making health insurance more like auto insurance, so the sick would be just as afraid of volatile insurance rates as drivers are now.

GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson in a recent discussion with an WFW New Hampshire activist called for cutting Medicare funding, eliminating income taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and promoting more job-killing imports.  Apparently unaware or unconcerned that it was a “free market” run wild that ran the economy into the ditch,  Johnson proudly dubbed himself a “free market guy.”

In an exchange that formed the basis of a Boston Globe article, GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman claimed—in response to a question from a WFW New Hampshire activist, and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary—that unfair trade deals don’t kill jobs. 

Apparently unfazed by the continuing failure of a well-tried prescription, Texas governor Rick Perry recently outlined to a WFW activist a jobs plan that relies exclusively on further tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations and fewer protections for workers, consumers, investors and the environment.

After WFW New Hampshire director Jaime Contois made The Washington Post for effectively questioning GOP frontrunner Rick Perry on the jobs crisis, the Right Wing blogosphere predictably defended the Texas governor—by attacking Jaime.

Tim Pawlenty, like his fellow GOP presidential candidates, wants to impoverish the Social Security system while restricting lower-income workers access to whatever’s left.

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, campaigning in Iowa and in response to a WFW activist’s question, recently described Medicaid’s practice of providing health coverage to all who qualify as “autopilot.” Pawlenty’s solution—which echoes House budget chair Paul Ryan’s radical prescription—is to provide for an arbitrary amount of Medicaid spending each year; once the money runs out, so does the health care.