Ad blames GOP for Ebola deaths

A liberal group called the Agenda Project is out with a new ad that shows dead bodies and blames Republican-backed budget cuts for deaths from Ebola. 

{mosads}The ad includes a montage of Republican lawmakers saying the word “cut” before showing images of what appear to be people who died from Ebola in Africa. The ad ends with the message: “Republican cuts kill,” before the final word on-screen, “vote.”

Democratic lawmakers, such as Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee, have blamed Republican budget cuts for slowing the response to Ebola.

The ad from Agenda Project features a clip of a National Institutes of Health official testifying before Congress that leaving the agency’s budget flat for the past 10 years has been “damaging.”

The NIH director, Dr. Francis Collins, told The Huffington Post on Friday that an Ebola vaccine would be ready by now if it were not for budget cuts over the past 10 years.

This ad makes that argument in particularly harsh terms.

It’s not the first time that the Agenda Project has stirred controversy with a campaign ad. In 2011, the group made an ad protesting Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) Medicare proposal by showing an elderly woman in a wheelchair being pushed off a cliff.

The latest ad includes several Republicans in tight races this year saying the word “cut,” including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.), Rep. Cory Gardner (Colo.), and Rep. Tom Cotton (Ark.)

McClatchy reports the group is planning ad buys in the battleground states of Kentucky, South Dakota, North Carolina and Kansas.