Hello! We all know my political leanings, or we all think we do, but in the interest of knowledge I'll try to keep this as objective as possible. If I fail.... eh, who cares.
Ok so...
In the coming campaign it seems we're going to hear a lot about President Obama attacking welfare reform and seeking to return us to a welfare state. We're probably not going to hear it in the debates, or on headlines, but we'll hear it from your friend at the bar, who heard it from his cousin, who posted something about on it facebook from a link he saw on redstate.com. (that site makes my brain hurt. Why do all conservative websites have such shitty design). What you will hear is some variation on this theme;
"President Obama passed a law in July that guts welfare reform
by getting rid of the workfare requirement"
Like I said, there will be variations depending on where you are, who is speaking, and how racist they are, but the above sentence will be the essence. Now, Is It True?
Yes.
But not how you think. Here is what's actually happening. History first. In 1996 then Congressman and now Governor John Kasich introduced H.R. 3734 into the house (look at that number! Look how high it is! God I miss the days when the house actually, ya know, did stuff...) to combat abuse of the welfare system. Now, whatever you think about abuse of the welfare system, it passed the house, the senate, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, or PRWORA, was signed into law by Clinton in the fall of 96, right before he went onto to grind Bob Dole to a pulp beneath his boots. No coincidence, I'm sure.
Now, one of the things, the thing relevant to what Obama did in July, that made PRWORA (In my mind this sounds like a dog drinking water from a high pressure hose) so Prwopular(!!) was the work to welfare requirements, which did more or less exactly what you'd think they would. This was specifically handled by a section of the bill called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF(Also known has the sound Nightcrawler makes when he teleports. #selfhighfive)
How it works is like this. You have a fixed time to recover from whatever hard knock forced you on the welfare rolls, then you'd better have a J.O.B. if you wanted to get with me, me in this instance being defined as more welfare. This is federally mandated, so it's an across the board 50 states solution. Exposition: We all know how well the GOP likes federally mandated across the board solutions.
So, we did that, and everyone was happy, and everyone got re-elected from it and then we all spent the next 4 years caring waaaaaaaay too much about Monica Lewinsky. Then fast forward to February of 2011. President Obama releases a memorandum to HHS, asking them to look for regulatory roadblocks they think they can remove to streamline things, his "We'll go line by line through the budget and eliminate waste" campaign pledge. When people at the HHS started asking around they found there was already a following of sorts for state level control of TANF regulation.
George Sheldon, Assit. Secretary of Health and Human Services: "During those consultations, many jurisdictions expressed a strong interest in greater flexibility in TANF and indicated that greater flexibility could be used by states to improve program effectiveness. We also heard concerns that some TANF rules stifle innovation and focus attention on paperwork rather than helping parents find jobs."
Normal Speak: PLEASE GIVE US STATE CONTROL OF OUR WELFARE REQUIREMENTS NOW PLEASE AND THANK YOU.
It is again important to note that the push to give TANF control to the states dates back to the early aughts and came largely from Republican Governors. Here is Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, more or less saying exactly that while Skyping with Chuck Todd and stabbing himself in the brain repeatedly.
Tommy Thompson, the guy he's crediting with asking for this process to be done, is a Republican, a former Governor, as well as the former HHS Sec. under Bush. It's safe to assume that, as the former head of the dept in charge of TANF, he is familiar with the inner workings of it. And he is not the only one who expressly petitioned for this! In 2005 a letter was sent to then Senate Majority leader Bill Frist by a group of GOP governors asking for more or less this exact thing. A lot of the people you will see accusing Obama of gutting welfare reform signed this letter. Haley Barbour. And Rick Perry. And Tim Pawlenty. And Mike Huckabee. And Jeb Bush. And Mitch McDaniels. And MITT ROMNEY.
Remember that.
That's important.
This thing that Obama did in July; when Mitt Romney was Governor of Mass.
he asked for exactly that thing.
Annnnnnnnnnnnywho, based on the input from state agencies, the HHS concluded that, "States are running less-effective programs than they might be, because they are so driven by performance measurement as it’s set forth in the federal law." So this July they released a memorandum stating that states could apply for waivers to bypass the work requirements in TANF in order to pursue state level solutions.
Solution soluted, right? Hardly. This is an election year, after all. By August the GOP starts attacking this move as undermining welfare as we know it. On August 6th Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell wrote an op-ed in the Richmond Times entitled Obama decree guts bipartisan consensus. Politifact called it as "false"
The next day the Romney campaign released this video
Politifact called this one as "pants on fire"
President Clinton, the man who initially passed the law and is praised in this commercial, responded with the following written statement, emphasis mine:
Governor Romney released an ad today alleging that the Obama administration had weakened the work requirements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. That is not true. [...]
The recently announced waiver policy was originally requested by the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada to achieve more flexibility in designing programs more likely to work in this challenging environment. The Administration has taken important steps to ensure that the work requirement is retained and that waivers will be granted only if a state can demonstrate that more people will be moved into work under its new approach. The welfare time limits, another important feature of the 1996 act, will not be waived.
The Romney ad is especially disappointing because, as governor of Massachusetts, he requested changes in the welfare reform laws that could have eliminated time limits altogether. We need a bipartisan consensus to continue to help people move from welfare to work even during these hard times, not more misleading campaign ads.
So, to sum up.
- We have regulations for Work to Welfare at a federal level.
- States don't like that, they want state level control of those requirements
- Conservative Governors, including Mitt Romney, start a campaign to get those controls.
- Health and Human Services issues a memo saying that states can apply to get exactly that, state level control.
- White House agrees to cede federal control of TANF to the States if they can show proof of an alternative program.
- The GOP attacks with accusations that are generally viewed as the opposite of true.
So, that's about it. Hate Romney. Hate Obama. But it seems that this memo is going to be a talked about thing in this campaign, so you should at least know what it actually does before you or someone you know gets enraged about it.
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