Another day, another hypocritical Romney lie -- this time about welfare

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Clearly desperate to turn the page away from a disastrous July, with the polls turning against him and nothing seeming to work, Mitt Romney's new line of attack is that President Obama has weakened "welfare-to-work" legislation around the country. "We will end a culture of dependency and restore a culture of good, hard work," Romney said yesterday in Chicago.

And it's a claim he makes in a new ad. Watch it:

It's complete bullshit -- par for the course for Romney. Now let's turn to my friend Steve Benen for some much-needed truth-telling:

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 [yesterday] morning, however, it's the basis for a new Mitt Romney attack ad.

It's important to realize this is as dishonest an ad as you'll ever see -- in 2012 or in any other campaign cycle...

[T]he 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.

But, again, entirely normal for Romney, who is making dishonesty the central theme of his campaign, more even than his self-aggrandizing plutocracy (tax cuts for the rich, out-of-touch douchebaggery).

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As Obama spokesperson Lis Smith explained:

Mitt Romney continues to make statements that he knows are both untrue and hypocritical. The Obama administration, working with the Republican governors of states like Nevada and Utah, is giving states additional flexibility only if they move more people from welfare to work – not fewer. But as governor, Mitt Romney petitioned the federal government for waivers that would have let people stay on welfare for an indefinite period, ending welfare reform as we know it, and even created a program that handed out free cars to welfare recipients. These false and extremely hypocritical attacks demonstrate how Mitt Romney lacks the core strength and principles the nation needs in a President.

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And Romney is being called on his lie. For example: 

Salon: As has already been widely noted, the line of attack is complicated by a few problems. First of all, it's not true, or at least wildly misleading. Obama's plan doesn't end work requirement... Secondly, it's a little tricky to slam Obama for handing out waivers when Romney himself supported the exact same proposal as governor of Massachusetts in 2005.

Politifact: By granting waivers to states, the Obama administration is seeking to make welfare-to-work efforts more successful, not end them. What's more, the waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs -- HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to welfare law.

Time's Joe Klein: How incompetent is the Romney campaign? They keep coming up with these stupid gambits – the last was the lie that Obama opposed early voting for members of the military in Ohio – that are shot down instantaneously (everywhere but in Fox-Rush land)... But there is a larger question here: How stupid does he think we are? Every day brings a mind-boggling act of untruth-telling.

HuffPo: Romney's ad doesn't mention that Republican states sought the waiver policy... The ad also doesn't mention that the Republican Governors Association asked Congress for even broader welfare waivers in 2005, in a letter signed by 29 Republican governors, including Romney.

NBC: But does the memo do what the Romney campaign charges -- that it guts welfare reform, gets rid of work requirements entirely, and would "just send you your welfare check"? Not exactly... The administration's HHS memo certainly does not make it so the federal government will now “just send you your welfare check," as the Romney campaign's television ad asserts.

TPM: But his accusations that President Obama is trying to "gut" the program by waiving its work requirements don't jibe with the administration's actual work guidelines. They also sidestep the fact that Romney himself supported such changes — he was just one of the Republicans who lent similar requests bipartisan support.

ABC: The claim appears to be an exaggeration... another exaggeration... a bit hypocritical... As the Obama campaign has pointed out, Romney signed a 2005 letter to Sen. Bill Frist (along with Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, etc.), when welfare programs were being reauthorized under Bush. As the governors lobbied Frist on the bill, they praised "state flexibility."

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Look, it's easy to see what Romney's up to. At this point, it's like throwing everything at the wall to see what, if anything, sticks.

And what he's clearly trying to do is tie Obama to welfare deadbeats, an easy (if also straw-man-like target), an evident appeal to the Republican base, both grassroots and elite, that considers the (black, probably Muslim, and certainly unqualified) president an un-American interloper bent on destroying the country. Welfare being a mostly black problem, in their view, that runs counter to the good ol' (mostly white) American value of "good, hard work." (If you think there's some racist dog-whistling going on here, you're right. It's in there, whether Romney himself means it or not.)

Maybe the morons who drool for Fox News are buying it, but there's no way this is sticking. It's so obviously a blatant lie, and all it's doing is reinforcing the rapidly growing perception of Romney as a shameless liar who will say anything to get elected.

Thankfully, voters aren't stupid enough to play along.