Is this the most dishonest ad of 2026?

An opaque nonprofit affiliated with Senate Republicans, One Nation, has blanketed Georgia over the last five days with a new ad attacking Senator Jon Ossoff (D). The group has spent $1.7 million in less than a week, delivering 78 million impressions of the ad across the state, according to data from AdImpact.

Almost nothing in the ad is true. More than once, the ad attacks Ossoff for positions that have actually been pursued by Senate Republicans.

“$2,100. That’s three months of groceries,” the ad states. “$2,100. That’s the tax increase Jon Ossoff supported. Ambitious and liberal, Ossoff voted with national Democrats to gut your child tax credit. He even voted for higher taxes on Social Security recipients earning under $75,000. A $2,100 tax increase on Georgia families.”

“Jon Ossoff doesn’t care about people like us,” the ad concludes. “Tell Senator Ossoff to stop voting for higher taxes.”

These claims are all false. Ossoff did not vote to “gut your child tax credit.” He provided a key vote to pass the largest child tax credit (CTC) expansion in history, over the vehement opposition of Senate Republicans, and advocated to make it permanent.

Ossoff voted against President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), over concerns about deep cuts to Medicare and other programs. While the OBBBA did include a small increase to the CTC, it left “out many of the poorest children from its full benefits,” according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Further, the ad claims Ossoff supported a “tax increase” of $2,100, making it harder for working Americans to provide groceries. But this is another reference to Ossoff’s vote against the OBBBA. Far from easing the burden at the grocery store, the OBBBA reduced household resources for Americans struggling to make ends meet.

According to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), under the law, the poorest ten percent of households will see resources reduced by around $1,200 per year on average between 2026 and 2034, while the wealthiest households will see resources increase $13,600 per year. Additionally, the Penn Wharton Budget Model found that the OBBBA “will make most households worse off because they will lose more from the spending cuts and negative economic effects of higher debt than they will gain from the tax cuts,” estimating that the law “will make households with incomes in the bottom 80 percent worse off over their lifetimes.”

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The law also included massive health care cuts. The cuts cut federal Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) “spending by $990 billion over the next ten years,” according to the CBO. The CBO estimated that the OBBBA “will increase the number of people without health insurance in 2034 by 10 million.”

Finally, the ad claims that Ossoff “voted for higher taxes on Social Security recipients earning under $75,000.” But the OBBBA did not change the tax treatment of Social Security income. Rather, it created an additional $6,000 deduction for seniors, regardless of whether or not they collected Social Security. It begins phasing out for taxpayers with incomes over $75,000 and will expire in 2028.

Ossoff is running for reelection in a competitive race against Representative Mike Collins (R-GA). A win for Collins would be a major pickup for Senate Republicans as they aim to maintain a majority in the Senate.

There is no information about who is funding the ad, as One Nation does not have to disclose its donors. The group’s primary purpose is to keep the names of its donors secret. The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the Super PAC that is associated with One Nation, can accept unlimited contributions and has more flexibility on how it can spend the money. The key difference is that the SLF has to report its donors to the Federal Election Commission.

The history of Republican opposition to expanding the Child Tax Credit

Despite the ad’s claims, it is Republicans who have opposed meaningful expansions of the CTC while Ossoff has supported such expansions on multiple occasions.

In 2021, as a part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the CTC was increased to a maximum of $3,600 for each child under six and $3,000 for each child aged six to 17. Most importantly, the law made it so that low-income families could claim the entire credit. As a result, 19 million more children received the maximum benefit and child poverty dropped to a record low of 5.2 percent. The ARPA was passed without support from a single Congressional Republican.

Ossoff voted in favor of the ARPA and said he supported making the CTC expansion, which was set to last only one year, permanent.

Later in 2021, the Biden administration sought to extend the expansion through its signature Build Back Better (BBB) policy. The plan was to revert to the pre-pandemic $2,000 maximum after one year, while leaving in place the provision that allowed low-income families access to the maximum credit. However, CTC expansion became a target for corporate lobbyists and Republican lawmakers. Republicans argued that by including low-income families, the expanded CTC would “lead many lower-income Americans to work less or entirely sever their connection to work.”

Ultimately, a trimmed-down version of the BBB which did not include the CTC provision was passed in 2022. When the expanded CTC lapsed, 3.7 million children fell into poverty.

Recognizing the impact of the CTC on child poverty, a bipartisan group of legislators in the House passed a plan in 2024 to make a small change allowing more low-income families to claim the full CTC. However, Senate Republicans opposed the bill, saying it would make then-President Joe Biden “look good” and that “all Republican leverage will be lost.” The opposition was led by Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID), who criticized the measure as a “subsidy” instead of a tax relief, providing undeserved relief to families who don’t contribute to the tax base. After allowing the bill to languish in committee for several months, the Senate ultimately rejected the bill 48-44, with all but three Senate Republicans voting against it. Ossoff voted in favor of the CTC expansion.