Mitt Romney is a big fat liar!

There was a time  when, in my (rather more) youthful naiveté that I really believed that even if two Presidential  candidates differed diametrically on an issue, they both  had some sincerity regarding their point of view on what was the right course for the country.  Even Lyndon with his war, I believed was doing what he thought the right thing. Even  Nixon and his paranoia, I believed  wanted  the best for America. 

            The most recent Romney ad has convinced me that this may not be true of our friend Mitt. The ad leads with a statement to the effect that the Obama administration has "gutted" welfare reform. Since the truth has been the victim in many of Romney's ads, here is the real truth regarding this one.

             The 1996 bipartisan welfare reform act ended welfare as a federal entitlement and transformed it into a program run by states within certain federal rules. Last month, the Obama administration announced it would allow states to apply for waivers from some of the rules if states had better ways of getting welfare recipients into jobs. This does not mean the relaxation of the "work for welfare" concept or time limit rules of the original bill, rather it does something every Republican should love, especially the Tea Partiers - it gives the states more leeway to innovate with programs that work better.  The Romney campaign ad  has suggests that the Obama administration made its welfare decision to foster a Democratic "culture of dependency" by making it easier for people to stay on welfare. Former President  Clinton pointed out that two Republican-controlled states had requested the waivers. "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," Clinton said, and added  that Republican governors, including Mitt Romney, sought a similar policy in 2005.  Clinton continued, 

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"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."

            Remember, this is Bill Clinton, who has not gone out of his way to support President Obama, thus far! At least five governors, including Republicans Gary Herbert of Utah and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, have been seeking such regulatory relief for years, the White House pointed out. In return, the directive offers states a new level of flexibility and breathing room for innovation, something that Republicans and conservatives usually favor.

            Don't believe ol' Bill?  OK, then  listen to Ron Haskins,  George W. Bush's senior advisor on welfare and former House Ways and Means Human resources subcommittee welfare counsel to first the Republican staff and then to the entire subcommittee.  "There's no plausible scenario under which it really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform," Ron Haskins, who is now co-director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families, said in an interview with NPR that aired on Wednesday. Welfare, formally known as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, is administered by states within federal rules. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services invited states to apply for waivers from some rules in order to run "demonstration projects" so that states could "consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of  helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment."

Haskins noted that the requirements states have to meet in order to receive the waivers are quite rigorous. "First of all, the states have to apply individually for waivers," he said. "And they have to explain in detail, sometimes using data, why this approach would lead to either more employment or better jobs for people who are trying to welfare or get off welfare.

            "Team Romney"  insists that the new Obama policy opens the door to a weakening of work requirements because it allows states to give a higher priority to the type of work recipients take than to their participation rate. “If I am president,” Romney said in Elk Grove Village, Ill., last week, “I will put work back in welfare.” But the Obama policy explicitly states that waivers will be granted only to proposals that will increase the percentages of cases to be moved off welfare rolls.

            So there is the truth, from both parties saner and senior members. So who and what does Mitt Romney really represent and what (other than desperately wanting to be President, so he can do something his daddy couldn't do)  does he really stand for?  When "W" was running in 2000, the Democrats in Texas described him as an "all hat and no cattle" cowboy. Mitt Romney doesn't even have a hat, and apparently the only bovine commodity at his disposal is bullshit!!