Ashley Hinson’s Tax Refund

Are You Kidding Me?

by Doug McReynolds

September 16, 2026

Did you get a federal income tax refund of $3,400 earlier this year?  Ashley Hinson says you did, and she would have you believe that her vote on the so-called “one big beautiful bill” is responsible for it.  This is a remarkable claim, and one that begs for a bit of a deeper dig into a number of things.

In the first place, of course, if you got a $3,400 tax refund (I didn’t, by the way, nor did the average Iowan—you can look it up), you are responsible for it because you are the one who paid that money into the system in the first place—not Ashley Hinson.  Let’s get that straight right off the bat.  Ashley Hinson is not responsible for your tax refund.

In the second place,  for some 125,000 Iowans (estimates range up to 136,000, but I’m naturally a conservative here), any tax refund was immediately gobbled up by the plus-or-minus twenty-five percent health insurance premium increase that resulted from the same “one big beautiful bill’s” failure to extend the American Rescue Plan approved by Congress (Hinson voted against it) in 2021 to bring some relief to the mostly rural—in Iowa, anyway—population depending on the ACA marketplace for affordable health insurance.

I think we know what all this has done to the quality of health care available in the more rural parts of the state, if it is available at all.  Forty birthing units closed, twenty-three rural hospitals currently facing high or immediate risk of closing, medical staff layoffs at MercyOne, clinics closing across the state….

And even if you had adequate health insurance subsidized through your workplace, and even if you live in Black Hawk County where we do have excellent medical facilities, that $3,400 refund went quickly enough on $4/gallon gasoline and $12/lb beef.  Inflation is currently running at 3.4 percent, and it’s on the rise.  The national debt is now past $40 trillion.  Thanks, Ashley!

We don’t know what Hinson’s own tax refund was this year, but we do know that her net worth has increased by eight million dollars since she went into “public service” six years ago.  I am reminded of Richard Leche, the Governor of Louisiana in 1938 who famously remarked, “When I took the oath of office, I didn’t take a vow of poverty” before he went to jail.  Wouldn’t he be a natural for a cabinet seat in the current administration?  And we know that Hinson voted to make permanent a temporary business tax break that directly benefits her family’s business.

That vote is particularly instructive.  The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was enacted to address a specific and temporary (and non-existent, as it turned out) condition of the U. S. economy; it gave a twenty percent income tax break to private businesses (though not to their employees) and was slated to expire on 31 December, 2025; the “one big beautiful bill” made those cuts permanent, by the way adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt.  When, on the other hand, Hinson had opportunity to extend the American Rescue Plan, or perhaps even make it permanent—and thus to preserve affordable health care insurance for eight million American people, including a hundred fifty thousand Iowans, she chose, rather, to let it go.

Hinson’s campaign also claims she is responsible for the $9,000 raise you received this year.  That’s right: you got a $9,000 raise this year, thanks to Ashley, and I bet you didn’t even know it.  I still haven’t got my head around that one.  Haven’t got the $9,000 either.

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