Morning Examiner: ‘They Just Send You Your Welfare Check’

Mitt Romney released a new 30-second attack ad accusing President Obama of “gutting” President Clinton’s bipartisan 1996 welfare reform law today. The ad, titled “Right Choice,” will begin airing in key swing states, and says:

In 1996, President Clinton and a bipartisan Congress helped end welfare as we know it. By requiring work for welfare. But on July 12th, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. 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. Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement because it works.

Conservatives have been pushing for Romney to embrace this issue ever since The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector first broke the story on July 12th. Rector, who worked with Republicans on the 1996 reform and watches the Department of Health and Human Services like a hawk, noticed a new administration directive establishing that state administered work requirements created by the 1996 reforms could be ignored if the state first got a waiver from the Obama administration. Problem is, while Congress did create a process for the Secretary to issue waivers for some welfare reform requirements, Congress specifically excluded the work requirement from the Secretary’s waiver authority. So not only is Obama’s new welfare directive bad policy, but it is also illegal.