Romney 2012?

Mitt Romney’s campaign launched a full-on attack on Tuesday accusing President Obama of gutting welfare reform. In a new ad, policy memo, and press release, Romney claims that the administration’s decision to offer waivers to states that develop innovative ways to meet the law’s work requirements is actually an attempt to “remove work participation rate requirements all together.”

“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job,” the ad’s narrator says. “They just send you your welfare check.”

The ad is blatantly false — the administration’s plan specifically maintains the work requirement, but allows states to experiment with other methods of transitioning recipients from welfare to work. This is a policy that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says will make Temporary Assistance for Needy Families a more effective program.

But the ad is also disingenuous, as it fails to mention that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney explicitly supported the same waiver program he is now criticizing. Romney was one of 29 Republican governors to sign a 2005 letter from the Republican Governor’s Association to congressional leadership touting the benefits a waiver program would bring their states:


The Senate bill provides states with with the flexibility to manage their TANF programs and effectively serve their low-income populations. Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.

As ThinkProgress has noted, Republican governors in both Utah and Nevada still support the waiver program. Both, incidentally, have endorsed Romney. And while Romney touts TANF’s success in a release accompanying the ad — welfare “reduced the number of people receiving monthly cash benefits from 12.2 million to 4.2 million,” it says — the program’s “success” hasn’t been because its recipients are finding jobs. In fact, TANF has failed to reach the people who need it most, especially compared to the programs that came before it.

As the directive from the Department of Health and Human Services states, the waiver program is aimed at helping more recipients transition to work. “HHS is encouraging states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment,” the directive says. “The Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits.”

And states will still be subject to federal evaluation and basic work requirements that “focus on measurable outcomes” and furthering TANF’s purpose. Failing to do so, HHS states, could result in “termination of the waiver project.”

[The independent Tax Policy Center] determined that Governor Romney’s plan would effectively raise taxes on middle-class families with children by an average of $2,000 -- to pay for this tax cut. Not to reduce the deficit. Not to invest in things that grow our economy, like education or roads or basic research. He’d ask the middle class to pay more in taxes so that he could give another $250,000 tax cut to people making more than $3 million a year. (Boo.)

It’s like Robin Hood in reverse. (Laughter.) It’s Romney Hood. (Applause.)

Bill Clinton calls Romney’s welfare claims 'not true'

DES MOINES—Former President Bill Clinton is pushing back against Mitt Romney's claim that President Barack Obama is trying to reverse bipartisan welfare reforms he signed into law in 1996. In a television ad released Tuesday and later at an event outside Chicago, Romney criticized a recent Department of Human Services directive that relaxed federal work [...]

Further, Obama has decided not to enforce DOMA, federal immigration law ( and sued Arizona for doing so), decreed, by fiat, an executive policy that essentially mirrors the Dems DREAM act and deemed Congress in recess when it decidedly was not just so that he could make some bureaucratic appointments. My statement stands.

When The Huffington Post asked the Romney campaign about Bain Capital accepting funds from families tied to death squads, a spokeswoman forwarded a 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article to explain the campaign's position on the matter. She declined to comment further.

"Romney confirms Bain had investors in El Salvador. But, as was Bain's policy with any big investor, they had the families checked out as diligently as possible," the Tribune wrote. "They uncovered no unsavory links to drugs or other criminal activity."

Nobody with a basic understanding of the region's history could believe that assertion.

By 1984, the media had thoroughly exposed connections between the death squads and the Salvadoran oligarchy, including the families that invested with Romney. The sitting U.S. ambassador to El Salvador charged that several families, including at least one that invested with Bain, were living in Miami and directly funding death squads. Even by 1981, El Salvador's elite, largely relocated to Miami, were so angered by the public perception that they were financing death squads that they reached out to the media to make their case. The two men put forward to represent the oligarchs were both from families that would invest in Bain three years later. The most cursory review of their backgrounds would have turned up the ties.

The connection between the families involved with Bain's founding and those who financed death squads was made by the Boston Globe in 1994 and the Salt Lake Tribune in 1999. This election cycle, Salon first raised the issue in January, and the Los Angeles Times filled out more of the record earlier this month.

There is no shortage of unsavory links. Even the Tribune article referred to by the Romney campaign reports that "about $6.5 million of $37 million that established the company came from wealthy El Salvadoran families linked to right-wing death squads."

Just how important could the debate over the Ryan budget, especially if he’s Romney’s VP pick? Just consider this AARP poll of voters over 50, in which Obama and Romney are tied 45-45% with the group (and with Obama’s approval at just 42%). Per this poll, 91% believe “Social Security is critical to the economic security of seniors” and “the next president and Congress need to strengthen Social Security so that it is able to provide retirement security for future generations.” (That includes about three-quarters of Romney voters.) And on Medicare: 95% say “Medicare is critical to maintaining the health of seniors” and 88% say the next president and Congress “need to strengthen Medicare so that it is able to provide health coverage in retirement for future generations.” The poll was conducted by Hart Research and GS Strategy Group. (Disclosure: Hart Research is the Democratic half of the NBC-WSJ poll.)Source