Worked Over
Here's the headline from the LA Times: "Rick Santorum repeats inaccurate welfare attack on Obama"
From the article:
Sen. Rick Santorum accused President Obama of creating a “nightmare of dependency” and undermining welfare reform [....] [H]is reprise of an inaccurate Romney campaign attack on Obama over welfare [...] gave Santorum’s speech its hardest edge.
“This summer he showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare,” Santorum said, referring to Obama.
“I helped write the welfare reform bill; we made the law crystal-clear: No president can waive the work requirement. [....]
In fact, Obama did not waive the work requirement.
His administration in July issued a letter to state governments saying that the Department of Health and Human Services would consider requests from states to experiment with new ways to fulfill the work requirements. The letter said that in order to receive waivers to carry out the experiments, states would have to show that their plans would move more welfare recipients into jobs than existing policies.
In other words, President Obama waived the work requirement.
Remember, this was a news report. I do wish the LA Times would put its editorials on the proper page.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:22 AM
3 Comments:
Whats so hard to understand. Its clear the work requirement was not waived. I so wish you would say things as they are
Anon. - Read this article by Kaus:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/28/the-welfare-issue-is-back/
Sure, the Romney ad is couched in exagerated terms - call 60 minutes, a political ad uses hyperbole!
But fundamentally, the Obama adminsitration has decided to open the door to changing the iron clad rule introduced by Bill Clinton to require that beforfe getting welfare, recipients be open to accepting any job they can get. It creates the possibility that some states (gee, I wonder which ones <> (California) - will create permanent exception to the once iron rule.
Back when Clinton trumpeted the reform, he knew that job training could help people get better jobs. But job training that may or may not result in productive jobs was not supposed to be a qualifier to receive welfare - which to conserevative minds is an enabler for resisting taking any job one can get.
Maybe the new policy is a good idea. But Obama's team certainly didn't highlight this change in policy - no big press announcement, so they seemed to be concerned at least about how this initiative looks.
Just about all states, red or blue, will create exemptions, since all states are happy to receive more money from the federal government.
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