In the latest example of Mitt Romney not telling the truth, he falsely attacks the President for weakening welfare to work requirements. The truth is that the President is giving states additional flexibility only if they move more people from welfare to work – not fewer. As Governor, Romney asked for even greater flexibility to waive the central part of the law by letting people receive benefits for an indefinite period and as HHS has said, his waiver request wouldn’t be approved today because it weakened the law too much. By falsely attacking a policy that both he and his Republican allies have supported for years, Romney is once again flip flopping on a position he took in Massachusetts, and demonstrating that he lacks the core strength and principles the nation needs in a President.”— Lis Smith, campaign spokeswoman
HERE’S THE AD
HERE’S THE TRUTH
History: In 2005, Governor Romney and 28 Republican Governors from the The Governors Association signed a letter to Senator Bill Frist requesting waivers on time limits for welfare benefits. In fact their request were far broader than the current administration’s. READ IT HERE.
The Obama administration has stated that it will not accept “watered” down versions of work requirements for each state. Each state must increase the movement of people from welfare to work by 20% to participate in the waivers. See the July 18, 2012 letter from Kathleen Sebelius Secretary of Health & Human Services. It clearly highlights that Romney’s standards misses the mark on welfare to work status.
And Check out the Truth Teams FACTS on President Obama’s efforts to reform welfare.
Governor Romney’s campaign can’t speak the truth about his SHADY Bain Capital dealings where his company drew lucrative funds from Americans losing their jobs to bankrupt companies managed by Bain, while he stashed his cash in the Cayman Island, or his secrecy about releasing his TAX RETURNS.
Mitt Romney has to resort to blatant LIES about the Black President and resort to Ronald Ray-gun-like tactics of the “Welfare Queen” meme to cover for his deception and secrecy about his financial history. MITT’S UNIFT TO LEAD!
Updates:
As Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney created programs that gave away free cars and insurance to welfare recipients, this plan also included welfare recipients who lost their jobs, returned to welvare and were allowed to keep their cars. Check it out here and here.
Think Progress Headline: “In 2005, Romney Supported Waivers He Now Claims Will ‘Undermine’ Welfare Reform.”
Huffington Post: Mitt Romney Ad Criticizes Obama For Welfare Policy Romney Supported As Governor
Folks don’t seem to know or care that the 2 media companies largely responsible for Romney’s ads are McCarthy Hennings Media, Inc(Whose founder Larry McCarthy produced the infamous “Willie Horton” ad and carried an underlying racist tone that portrayed Dukakis as soft on crime and led to his 1988 election pummeling) and Mentzer Media(who produced the infamous “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ad that accused John Kerry of distorting his war record). These two companies have a long history of producing extremely negative campaign ads. No surprise Romney is utilizing their services.
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Posted at 01:23 PM ET, 08/07/2012
The politics of resentment makes a comeback
By Greg Sargent
The new Mitt Romney ad attacking Obama over welfare is generating a lot of chatter this morning, as it was clearly designed to do. It hits Obama for supposedly “gutting” Bill Clinton’s welfare reform bill, by “dropping work requirements.”
“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work,” the ad says. “They just send you your welfare check.”
The ad is highly dishonest; Steve Benen and Arthur Delaney both do a good job taking it apart. The key point is that Republican-led states — Utah and Nevada — had led the request for waivers to the work requirement in the welfare reform bill, so they could experiment with ways to do a better job shifting people from welfare to jobs. The work requirement would remain; states would have more flexibility in implementing it.
To sum up, this ad is tantamount to claiming that Republican governors want to gut welfare reform and ensure that the government just sends people a “welfare check.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-politics-of-resentment-makes-a-comeback/2012/08/07/3e04645a-e0ae-11e1-a19c-fcfa365396c8_blog.html
August 07, 2012 2:50 PM
Let the Big Dog Speak
By Ed Kilgore
I have to admit, if not admire, the superficial cleverness of the Romney attack on Obama’s welfare policies. Republicans may have very well set the administration up for this by asking for more state flexibility in administering work requirements with every intention of blasting them if they granted it (as Alec Macgillis suggested in a tweet today). It’s a complex law that’s incredibly easy to demagogue.
Most importantly, it places the Meta-Message of the entire conservative assault on Barack Obama—that he wants to loot good virtuous working folk of their hard-earned tax dollars to pay those people—you know who they are—loaf and steal and make babies and even take out mortgages they have zero attention of paying—on a stronger footing. Up until now Republicans were basically using the old “welfare queen” meme on the working poor, the “lucky duckies” who were receiving refundable EITC credits and would benefit from the Affordable Care Act because they don’t currently qualify for Medicaid. But because they were working (or at least trying to work), they were more sympathetic figures than the old pre-1996 “welfare class.” The purpose of the ad and the highly contrived argument it makes is to bring back the good old days of blatant race-baiting aimed at people who often don’t even vote.
The other meme the ad reinforces is that Obama is stealthily unraveling the “centrist” policies of Bill Clinton, and dragging the Democratic Party back to the bad old days of unreconstructed paleoliberalism. It’s no mistake it features a photo of Clinton signing the 1996 welfare reform law.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/let_the_big_dog_speak039077.php
GOP governors sidestep Romney lie
By Steve Benen
Tue Aug 7, 2012 4:46 PM EDT.
When President Obama agreed to extend additional flexibility to states on welfare experimentation, he did so in response to a request from two Republican governors: Utah’s Gary Herbert and Nevada’s Brian Sandoval. Because Obama agreed to these GOP officials’ request, Mitt Romney is falsely accusing the president of “gutting” welfare reform.
The reality, whether it’s said out loud or not, is that every relevant player knows Romney’s blatantly lying. Reporters know it; Obama knows it; Republicans know it; Bill Clinton knows it; Romney certainly knows it; and even Herbert and Sandoval know it. They are, after all, the ones who asked for the waivers in the first place.
So Greg Sargent did something smart: he asked the Republican governors’ offices for their take on Romney’s demonstrably ridiculous claim. They both dodged.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/07/13166948-gop-governors-sidestep-romney-lie?lite
Mitt Romney’s a LYING SACK-O-SHIT
In an interview today with Fox News’ Carl Cameron, Mitt Romney said that he agreed with President Obama that states need additional “flexibility to craft programs in a way that is best for each state”, but that the Obama administration’s welfare action was “eliminating” work requirements. That statement is false. The Obama Administration’s action specifically requires states to increase the number of people moving from welfare to work by 20 percent in order to get a waiver. In fact, it was Romney who supported a policy in 2005 that would have allowed states to eliminate time limits for individuals on welfare, which was core to the 1996 bipartisan welfare to work reforms.
Transcript:
CAMERON: Democrats are accusing you of hypocrisy this morning pointing to your 2005 letter as the then Governor of Massachusetts as part of the RGA’s appeal to Congress increase flexibility for states. You were for this in 2005 and now you’re against it in 2012.
ROMNEY: I’m all in favor for flexibility for states, I’m not in favor of reducing the work requirement. Flexibility for states, allowing states to craft their own programs to care for their own people in the way they think best makes all the sense in the world and as Governor, time and again, I fought to increase the work requirements. Yeah, I want state flexibility to craft programs in a way that is best for each state. This idea of the federal government telling states what to do, in my opinion, is the wrong way to go, but my focus is on increasing work requirements, not eliminating them and what the President is doing is saying that we are going to take out the requirement for work, it is a big mistake.
THE TRUTH IS, MITT ROMNEY WANTS TO PLAY THE “LYING GAME” TO AVERT & DISTRACT FROM HIS TAX RETURNS.
AGAIN, I REPEAT: PRESIDENT OBAMA ‘S PLAN ALLOWS FOR BOTH STATE FLEXIBLITY, AND ONLY IF THEY MOVE MORE PEOPLE OFF WELFARE AND INTO WORK, NOT FEWER.
Dubious claim behind Romney welfare attack
The latest attack launched by Mitt Romney involves an assertion that President Obama has decided to “gut” popular welfare reforms instituted in the 1990s, transforming the public assistance program into a giveaway for the impoverished.
The presumptive Republican nominee hailed the welfare reforms achieved by President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans, which conditioned receiving welfare on seeking work, as a bipartisan triumph of the 1990s. In the same breath, he accused Obama of trying to “reverse that accomplishment by taking the work requirement out of welfare.”
It’s a charge that was echoed in a new television ad released Tuesday by the Romney campaign, as well as a conference call held this morning by senior advisers.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/07/13165243-dubious-claim-behind-romney-welfare-attack?lite&__utma=238145375.510733111.1344275117.1344363674.1344363688.4&__utmb=238145375.1.10.1344363688&__utmc=238145375&__utmx=-&__utmz=238145375.1344275117.1.1.utmcsr=t.co%7cutmccn=%28referral%29%7cutmcmd=referral%7cutmcct=/GEAWQGgA&__utmv=238145375.%7c8=Earned%20By=msnbc%7cpolitics%7cpolitics=1%5e12=Landing%20Content=Mixed=1%5e13=Landing%20Hostname=www.msnbc.msn.com=1%5e30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Internal%20to%20Mixed=1&__utmk=68955858
The scandal behind Romney’s new attack ad
By Steve Benen
Tue Aug 7, 2012 10:50 AM EDT.
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has presented the political world with an important test. I’m eager to see whether we pass or fail.
First, a little background. Some Republican governors this year asked the Obama administration for some new flexibility on welfare standards — the governors had some ideas about moving folks from welfare to work and needed the White House to sign off. Obama agreed — existing work requirements would stay in place, but states, if they want to, can take advantage of new flexibility when it comes to experimenting with existing law.
This is the sort of shifting-power-to-the-states policy that Republicans are supposed to love. As of this morning, however, it’s the basis for a new Mitt Romney attack ad
http://youtu.be/0F4LtTlktm0
It’s important to realize this is as dishonest an ad as you’ll ever see — in 2012 or in any other campaign cycle.
For those who can’t watch clips online, the ad shows President Clinton signing welfare reform into law in 1996, “requiring work for welfare.” The spot then argues, however, that President Obama “quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” The voiceover tells viewers, “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check…. and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.”
We then learn, “Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement because it works.”
Romney’s lying. He’s not spinning the truth to his advantage; he’s not hiding in a gray area between fact and fiction; he’s just lying. The law hasn’t been “gutted”; the work requirement hasn’t been “dropped.” Stations that air this ad are disseminating an obvious, demonstrable lie.
All Obama did is agree to Republican governors’ request for flexibility. That’s it. Indeed, perhaps the most jaw-dropping aspect of this is that Romney himself, during his one gubernatorial term, asked for the same kind of flexibility on welfare law that Obama agreed to last month. Romney, in other words, is attacking the president for doing what Romney asked the executive branch to do in 2005.
The entire line of attack is simply insane.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/07/13163204-the-scandal-behind-romneys-new-attack-ad?lite