Friday, August 10, 2012

Washington Post: Romney is Lying About Welfare Waivers

Mitt Romney certainly fits the mold of GOP politicians who wrap themselves in religion and then shred the Bible message.  Not to mention that when their lips are moving, it;'s a safe bet that they are lying.  They've apparently learned well from their Christofascist masters in the GOP base.  A case in point is the Romney campaign claim that Barack Obama has gutted welfare requirements that recipients need to be working.  It's not true by Mr. Romney - who seems to believe in a reverse Robin Hood social order where you steal from the poor and give to the rich - is running with the lie nevertheless.  The lie is apparently too much for the editorial board at the Washington Post which has called Romney out as a liar.  They were more diplomatic in the language they used, but distilled to its essence, that's what it comes down to.  Romney's a liar on this and so many things.  Here are excerpts from the editorial:

THE 1996 WELFARE reform law wrought dramatic change. It reduced the rolls from 4.6 million families to 1.7 million by 2009. Child poverty rates fell and single-mother employment rates went up.  Mitt Romney and his campaign claim the Obama administration has gutted this landmark law. Says a 30-second ad paid for by the Republican National Committee: “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check. Welfare-to-work goes back to being plain old welfare.”

 This is false. The disputed July 12 memorandum from the Department of Health and Human Services offers to waive certain provisions in the current law for states that want to try new methods of meeting the work requirement. Even if those waivers did “gut” the work requirement, the main pillars of reform — a fixed federal block grant to the states of $16.5 billion per year, a five-year lifetime limit on federally funded benefits and aggressive caseload reduction goals — would still stand.

Mr. Romney’s sloppy, hyperbolic attack is doubly unfortunate given that welfare was historically a racially fraught issue that reform defused. 

When Congress reauthorized welfare reform in 2005, . . .  
included more specific work definitions, coupled with stricter reporting requirements for the states. Additionally, it told states that they would be held accountable for keeping caseloads below the 2005 level, not the 1996 level, as the previous law did.

States chafed at the new norms, arguing that the administrative burdens made it hard to meet the ambitious new caseload reduction norms. There is some evidence that they’re right. But Congress has failed to agree on a new version of the law, so the 2005 version has been repeatedly extended. 

Ironically, some of the states that were whining are under GOP control, so once again we see the GOP talking out of both sides of its mouth - certainly not anything new - as they first asked for waivers and now act as if it's Obama who began the process.

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