The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has aimed a salvo against Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, airing a TV commercial that assails Brown for supporting the 2010 health care overhaul law signed by President Barack Obama.
 
The commercial, part of a $10 million advertising campaign by the chamber in 20 races across the country, charged that the new bill kill jobs.
 
But the commercial appears to veer into a misleading attack when it cited the overwhelming victory last November by backers of Issue 3. The statewide ballot asked if voters opposed being forced to take part in a health plan, a key requirement of the new health law. More than 60 percent of those who voted said they would oppose such a mandate.
 
The Chamber ad's narrator asserted that Brown claimed the vote “doesn’t tell us anything.’’ The narrator then asks, “Sherrod, what planet are you on?’’
 
That’s not exactly what Brown said. In a conference call with Ohio reporters after the vote, Brown said the wording of the ballot was confusing. He said that if backers had asked voters whether they approved of the new law’s requirement that parents could keep their adult children on an insurance plan, “the result would have been very different. They took one part of the bill and did a message amendment on that (which) won't have a lot of meaning.’’
 
It is unclear whether Brown even uttered the phrase “doesn’t tell us anything.’’