New Romney ad hits Obama on welfare

(CBS News) In a new television ad, Mitt Romney challenges President Obama on a new directive that allows states to tailor their work requirements for welfare recipients.

The new ad invokes President Clinton who passed "bipartisan" changes to the welfare system in 1996 that required recipients to look for work or participate in job training programs.

"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," the narrator says.

The ad attempts to paint Mr. Obama as the "candidate of big government of liberal policies and of a belief that the government does things best," Romney spokesperson Ryan Williams told CBSNews.com Tuesday morning.

The president's executive order issued in July gives states a waiver relating to the work requirements, allowing states to "test alternative and innovative strategies" to put people to work.

Republicans, including Romney, slammed the president for gutting the work requirements. The conservative Heritage Foundation says the president's actions make the work requirements "essentially meaningless."

But the Obama administration shot back. In a letter from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Republicans in Congress, she said, "No policy which undercuts that goal or waters down work requirements will be considered or approved."

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Meantime, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney was one of more than two dozen Republican governors who wrote a letter to Republican Congressional leaders in 2005 to ask for increased flexibility in the work requirements.

"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," the letter read.

The Romney campaign argues that what Romney and the Republican governors asked for was different than the president's actions.

"They were talking about flexibility," Williams said. "Governor Romney was not asking for work requirements to be changed."

A memo sent to reporters by the Romney campaign said that as Massachusetts governor, "Romney vetoed efforts to weaken work requirements and he pressed repeatedly to instead strengthen them and bring them in line with federal standards."

[cybervigilante]

What welfare? The safety net was shredded long ago, starting, oddly enough, with Clinton. Now that Bush's phony war, tax cut for the rich, and the depredations of the bankers have wrecked the economy and put millions out of work, let's trash the tiny, insufficient safety net that's left, so they can all starve while Mitt dines on lobster.

[syslmod]

What a lying Sack of Sheet. Know what's going to happen? Mittens will get elected and then we'll find out he's gay.

[marychgo]

For this election we need to revise the old threesome -- "Lies, damn lies, and statistics" -- to "Lies, damn lies, and Romney ads."

[Ben37221]

Republicans make noise about walfare, yet the red states receive more walfare than anyone else. Just like they oppose healthcare, yet, again the red states lags when it comes to healthcare to the blue states. Why do the republican base continue to vote against their own interest?

[Ben37221]

How sad. Romney cannot even get his facts straight. Just like he supported Romneycare, and now deny ever doing that. Now he runs away from his own request from the federal government for flexibility in the work requirement.
Romney have no core, dishonest. Will go where the wind blows. How can anyone in their right mind vote for Romney, and be able to look at their kid, telling them that they just voted for one of the most inconsistent, and unprincipled politicians the world have ever known.?
Yes, how can they tell their children that they voted for a man who shipped American jobs overseas. Have overseas bank account all over the globe to avoid paying taxes. The last thing Romney knows how to do is create jobs-he was 47th out of 50 state among all the governors. Romney is a man everyone knows his words are like the fog-you cannot take it anywhere.

[cybervigilante]

Although Romney is a stooge, the Obama Administration just let Goldman-Sachs (Tim Geithner's alum) go Scott free for all their vast crimes. So we'll vote for the banker's candidate or the banker's candidate in November. Not much of a choice.

[alanrobisch]

lets see it is factual that Obama has signed an order allowing things that have no connection to work as equivalent of work yet the reporter makes serious attempts to confirm its accuracy yet in a viscious ad that has no truth to it, she makes no attempt to analyse the ad attacking Mitt Rommney. I guess is the point we are told their is no liberal bias in the media

[CaptainSmollett]

Obama professes to be the defender of the working-class. But working-class wealth creation can only happen in concert with a thriving system of free-enterprise that creates jobs and opportunity. The two MUST go hand-in-hand - we cannot have one without the other.

Obama, however, is the antipathy of an enthusiastic champion of free-market capitalism. In fact, he as created an extremely uncertain environment that is unfriendly to business, discourages investment and hiring, and vilifies success. So we are witness to a conflict of promises and ideology, resulting in more campaign rhetoric targeting unsophisticated voters with promises that will inevitably be broken.....again.

[CaptainSmollett]

Dan, you are the lemming if you believe Obama's promises.
Has he delivered for you on the ones from last campaign?

[jasoncgalvez]

Wow. I received my Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. Was that you sitting behind me?

[audemus]

There's a handful of buzz words and phrases that make right-wing nuts foam at the mouth....welfare is one...food stamps is another...universal health-care yet another....They are so damn paranoid and fearful that someone's going to get something for free that they completely abandon all common sense and basic human compassion. They remind me of that easily manipulated mob in Germany back in the 30s that Hitler so masterfully shaped and fashioned into a howling, insane pack of dogs unwilling or incapable of rational thought. The scape-goat in Hitler's Germany were the Jews, the scape-goat in right wing America are the poor. The republican party continuously tries to blame everything it can get away with on liberal policies and those "bums sitting around on their lazy *****", all the time pursuing an agenda that protects their ever increasing wealth and strangle hold on power. They managed to involve our country in not one but two wars at the cost of some $ 1.3 TRILLION and counting, and the deaths of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan numbering in the 6 figures as well as thousands of U.S. and coalition deaths and many more maimed and disabled for life, all the while condemning some 45,000 people to death each and every year who died from easily treatable illness and disease and accident by opposing health care for all....and they still threaten to repeal what limited progress has been made on that issue....darkening that slightest glimmer of hope our country's poor, sick and dieing have managed to glimpse.

Anyone who can honestly say they support the policies of such a group of people have my justifiable pity and anger....because they have lost whatever bit of human decency they ever possessed if any, and they are inflicting the results of their deficiencies upon people too poor and too powerless to fight back.

[CaptainSmollett]

Unfortunately, you have a VERY twisted view of fiscal conservatism. Your comparison to Hitler is crass and extremely ignorant. Liberalism and socialism is the downfall of the poor, but apparently that is beyond your intellect. If you looked at what is happening in southern Europe, you'd get a clue.

[audemus]

It is impossible and the height of irresponsibility to examine only the fiscal policies of the republican agenda, while ignoring their social views and direction. There is more to the make-up of a political party and ideology than one aspect...Hitler may have made the "trains run on time", but the blood of millions of people will forever be on his hands. The neo-fascist ideas emanating from the conservative right in America need to be examined and called out for what they are. There is absolutely nothing crass, twisted or ignorant here except the policies and belief systems of a core of power-mad sociopaths, masquerading around as a viable political option.

If you say that liberalism and socialism has led to the downfall of European economies, then logically you must blame capitalism and democracy for what's occurred in the United States. Ask any American who has lost his job and cannot find another one who's to blame for his troubles....ask someone whose been thrown out of their home because of predatory lending practices and the downfall of our economy if they blame the liberal socialists in southern Europe, or the capitalistic greed and criminal corruption in OUR financial system for their misery....I think everyone knows what the answer would be.

Hitler also attacked liberals every chance he got, and the comparison of his beliefs and policies to what's now happening in the far right-wing of the republican party is disturbingly similar in atmosphere if not fact...ignoring that is the true ignorance.

I assume you are a republican, or at least against the present administration....if what's taking place in the conservative movement in this country is bothering your conscience, that's a good thing....perhaps you should explore that while you still have one.

[WHAT-IS-HE-SMOKING]

FLIP-FLOPPER at it again, back in 2005 he wanted the states to have more control on the welfare monies, but today NO.

Which side of your face are you talking from Mitty?

[varigdc10]

I don't believe anyone any more, not Obama, neither the Mitt. All is out of control, neither has any specific and detailed ideas on how to do things. It's mud slinging at its best. I think they are just plain old liars, who wants to be president anyway, its the worst job in the world.

[MurdochSucks]

Sadly, in the end, most of our politicians are politicians first, humans second.

[MurdochSucks]

Well, maybe not Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul. They are completely up front about what they want to do, and how they feel, no matter the consequences.