Ashley Moody, Florida's Republican senator, has a new TV ad. It's set in a diner. A server pours coffee for a table of older customers. "She works nine-hour shifts, mostly on her feet," Moody says. "They spent 40 years paying in to Social Security."
Then comes the pitch: "I voted to stop taxing tips and Social Security while my opponent backed a $4 trillion tax hike on everyone in this diner."
PolitiFact Florida checked the ad. It rated the attack "Half True," because it "leaves out important details or takes things out of context." And along the way it found that Moody's claim about her own vote doesn't hold up either.
She didn't vote to stop taxing tips or Social Security
The law Moody is talking about is Trump's budget bill, which she voted for in July 2025. Here is what it actually did, according to PolitiFact:
- It gave workers a temporary tax break on some of their tip income.
- It gave some people 65 and older an extra $6,000 tax deduction, also only until 2028.
- "It didn't end taxes on Social Security or tips."
Neither tax is gone. The law created temporary deductions, not the end of the tax.
Who got most of the tax cuts
The diner setting is meant to say the law was for working people. The experts PolitiFact talked to said the opposite.
"It is the case that the benefits of the tax cuts were larger for higher-income Americans than they were for low and middle income Americans," said Joseph Rosenberg of the Tax Policy Center. He pointed to the law's cuts to estate and gift taxes, which he said "only very wealthy people are subject to."
The Tax Foundation's Garrett Watson estimated that 35% of the law's tax cuts went to the top 10% of earners.
What her opponent actually wants
Moody's Democratic opponent, state Rep. Angie Nixon, has said many times that she wants to repeal the budget bill. If you repealed every word of it, experts told PolitiFact, taxes could go up by about $4 trillion. That's where Moody's number comes from.
But PolitiFact found that Nixon's objections have focused on the law's breaks for the rich and for corporations. On CBS, she said she'd repeal the bill and "make sure that these big-time billionaires and ultra-wealthy millionaires pay what they owe." Her campaign told PolitiFact she supports ending taxes on tips and Social Security, and wants to undo only the parts of the law that help the wealthy and corporations.
Undoing just the top earners' tax cuts could raise about $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, according to Watson. That money would come from the wealthy, not from the server or the retirees in the ad.
She's done this before
This isn't the first time Moody has stretched the truth about Nixon. In August, she read four positions off another group's platform in her victory speech and pinned them on Nixon. PolitiFact found no evidence Nixon holds any of them.
What the record shows
Ashley Moody's new ad says she "voted to stop taxing tips and Social Security." PolitiFact found the law she voted for "didn't end taxes on Social Security or tips." It created temporary deductions instead, and most of its tax cuts went to higher earners. The ad's "$4 trillion tax hike on everyone in this diner" assumes Nixon would repeal the whole law. Her campaign says she would repeal only the parts that help the wealthy and corporations.
