{"id":11854,"date":"2012-08-08T08:20:30","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=11854"},"modified":"2012-08-08T08:35:16","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T13:35:16","slug":"romneys-welfare-to-work-attack-on-obama-not-quite-accurate-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2012\/08\/08\/romneys-welfare-to-work-attack-on-obama-not-quite-accurate-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney\u2019s welfare-to-work attack on Obama not quite accurate, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

McClatchy<\/em> has the story Romney\u2019s welfare-to-work attack on Obama not quite accurate, experts say<\/strong><\/a>. Quite a headline when in fact what Romney claims is the exact opposite of the truth.\u00a0 One might even go so far as to say that the exact opposite of the truth is called a lie in many circles.\u00a0 I don’t know about McClatchy.<\/p>\n

The Republican presidential campaign aired a 30-second television spot leveling the charges, and Romney built on them at a campaign event in Illinois, extolling the 1996 welfare reform act as \u201cone of the greatest bipartisan successes we\u2019ve seen\u201d and telling the crowd that Obama \u201chas tried to reverse that accomplishment by taking the work requirement out of welfare.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A former Republican staffer and staff director of the committee that helped draft the bill may make the most believable case against Romney.<\/p>\n

Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Institution Center on Children and Families and a former Republican congressional committee staff director, said he believes the administration erred in not reaching out to Congress before it made the change. But he called Romney\u2019s assertion \u201cclearly an overstatement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haskins, who was staff director on the committee that helped draft the House bill that eventually resulted in the legislation Clinton signed, pointed out that contrary to the ad\u2019s claim, the Obama administration\u2019s offer of waivers \u201cdoesn\u2019t do some broad overhaul.\u201d<\/p>\n

States would have to apply for the waiver and each state requesting a waiver would be required to show how the new approach would either \u201cincrease employment or lead to better employment,\u201d Haskins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you just read the words (of the policy) it\u2019s a reasonable kind of provision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And Haskins noted that it would be to the states\u2019 advantage to keep caseloads low, \u201cso the idea that they\u2019re going to use these waivers to bring all kinds of cases onto their rolls, it really doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then there is one former Governor of Massachusetts, coincidentally also called Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

Administration officials noted that in 2005, 29 Republican governors \u2013 including then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney \u2013 requested similar authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps (Romney\u2019s) argument is with his past self,\u201d White House spokesman Jay Carney suggested.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How desperate is Romney to make charges against the administration that are almost instantly proven to be false?\u00a0 I know there is a propaganda theory about the big lie, but this time the press seems to actually be awake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McClatchy has the story Romney\u2019s welfare-to-work attack on Obama not quite accurate, experts say. Quite a headline when in fact what Romney claims is the exact opposite of the truth.\u00a0 One might even go so far as to say that the exact opposite of the truth is called a lie in many circles.\u00a0 I don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-stevegsposts","czr-hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11854"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11862,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11854\/revisions\/11862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}