Mitt Romney is completely shameless. Last week he released a video accusing the president of gutting welfare reform when, in fact, the president only responded to a request from two Republican governors to be granted leeway in advancing welfare to work programs. Meanwhile, in 2005, Mitt Romney and 28 other Republican governors specifically requested the same latitude -- and much more.
And yet, here's the new video from Romney today:
The Huffington Post adds:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who Romney announced on Saturday would be his running mate, also has a complicated history on welfare. As ThinkProgress points out, "In 2002, Ryan folded a provision into a House-backed version of President Bush’s welfare reauthorization bill that provided his home state 'a significant break in meeting new federal work rules,' lowering the work requirement from 70 percent to just 45 percent."
Who's gutting what now?
And finally, here's FactCheck.org on the original claim from the Romney campaign:
A Mitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted “a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” The plan does neither of those things.
Work requirements are not simply being “dropped.” States may now change the requirements — revising, adding or eliminating them — as part of a federally approved state-specific plan to increase job placement.
And it won’t “gut” the 1996 law to ease the requirement. Benefits still won’t be paid beyond an allotted time, whether the recipient is working or not.
So not only was the first video a verifiable lie, but in the face of these accusations they released a second ad with the same information. That's pathological. Oh, and by the way, it's also quite clearly another step deeper into the ugly shitpile of the Southern Strategy.