PLANK AUGUST 8, 2012
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“Tough on Kids; Weak on Work.” That was Bill Clinton’s regular and emphatic judgment on the Republican attitude on welfare reform as he vetoed two congressional GOP bills before cutting the deal that became the landmark 1996 law.
This was no mere rhetoric. As a welfare policy wonk in the 1990s I can attest to the fact that Republican interest in welfare reform was focused on everything other than work: punishing illegitimacy, creating absolute time limits for eligibility, devolving responsibility for the indigent to the states, and saving money for the federal government. If work requirements helped meet these goals, Republicans were supportive, but it was hardly their main interest, particularly if it required “making work pay” for welfare recipients via support for the working poor.
That’s one of several reasons the new Mitt Romney campaign ad attacking Barack Obama for an alleged “gutting” of the 1996 law by “dropping work requirements” is so mendacious and hypocritical.
The most immediate outrage is that the ad’s central claim is, to use a technical term, a lie. The Obama administration has not changed the architecture of the 1996 welfare reform law at all. What it has done, as a response to repeated requests by governors from both parties for flexibility in administering the law—a demand Republicans, including Mitt Romney, have been making from practically the moment it was signed—is to say it was open to offering waivers that exclude states from precisely those regulations that inhibit rather than encourage placing welfare recipients in jobs.
The July 12 memo from HHS Office of Family Assistance Director Earl Johnson which announced the waiver policy is reasonably clear about what the agency will and will not consider:
HHS is encouraging states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF [Temporary Aid to Needy Families], particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment. Therefore, HHS is issuing this information memorandum to notify states of the Secretary’s willingness to exercise her waiver authority under section 1115 of the Social Security Act to allow states to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families….
HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF.
Elsewhere in the memo—and in public statements by HHS officials—it’s made abundantly clear that the work focus and time limits for assistance that were imposed by the 1996 law will not and in their judgment cannot be waived.
So what about the Romney ad’s claim that “under Obama’s plan you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They’d just send you your welfare check”? It represents a bundle of outright fabrications. There is no “Obama’s plan,” no abolition of work or training requirements, no return to a personal entitlement to assistance, and no unconditional assistance. The administration’s actual offer to the states of limited flexibility in the means of achieving the law’s unchanging goals is in no way a departure from past policies under either Democratic or Republican administrations. In fact, it explicitly tracks repeated Republican demands! In the early prehistory of welfare reform, Republicans tried to turn “welfare” into a block grant that states could have used pretty much whatever they wanted.
(Indeed, Bill Clinton vetoed one such Republican-passed law before signing the 1996 act in question. Generally, Romney’s campaign may have miscalculated somewhat by including in the new ad an image of Clinton signing the 1996 law. That has liberated the Big Dog himself to blast the ad’s assertions in scorching detail.)
Some may say campaign ads that distort and even lie about an opponent’s record or proposals are standard operating procedure these days. Is there any reason this ad should be taken more seriously?
The answer is yes. Aside from the fact that the ad is no mere feint, but is already in heavy rotation on the airwaves and is being echoed by Romney himself on the campaign trail, it makes unmistakably audible the main, recurring conservative “dog whistle” about Obama: He’s the unreconstructed old-school lefty who has unmoored his party from its Clinton Era centrist reforms and is determined to loot virtuous middle class taxpayers on behalf of shiftless poor and minority folk. Up until now, conservatives have engaged in the politically perilous tactic of demonizing the working poor: the “lucky duckies” who benefit from the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit; the wage-earners who don’t currently qualify for health insurance under Medicaid but would receive help under the Affordable Care Act; and lurking behind all these would-be “looters,” the struggling new homeowners whom conservatives so often blame for taking out mortgages they couldn’t afford and thus triggering the housing and financial crises.
Americans tend to admire the working poor, so this tack tends to produce an ambivalent reaction beyond the GOP’s conservative base. But by shifting its focus to the old conservative target of non-working “welfare bums,” the Romney campaign is on safer ground, assuming, as you should, that they don’t care if the ad reopens the racial wounds and grievances that welfare reform appeared to partially lay to rest. A line from a memo released by Romney campaign policy director Lanhee Chan in defense of the ad makes its intended audience very plain, calling the imaginary new Obama welfare policy “a kick in the gut to the millions of hard-working middle-class taxpayers struggling in today’s economy, working more for less but always preferring self-sufficiency to a government handout.” It’s the ancient “welfare queen” meme designed to encourage the non-college educated white voters whose maximum support Romney needs to overcome its exceptional weakness among minority and more highly-educated voters to see in Obama all the old hobgoblins that drove them out of the Democratic coalition to begin with.
It may be a sign of Romney’s weakness that he and his team are now willing to openly play with such racial and cultural dynamite. Or maybe it was the idea all along.
15 comments
Who are the middle class to blame for the stagnant (or worse) middle class economy, those above or those below. Obama would have them blame those above. Romney would have them blame those below. It seems to me that the two campaigns have done a good job of identifying an important issue in this campaign. In my small southern town the culprit is unions. That there are no unions or union members within hundreds of miles makes it easier to blame the unions since nobody hereabouts actually knows anybody in a union. I don't suspect the local middle class would blame those below, but they are even less likely to blame those above since they personally know some of those above from the churches they attend. As income inequality has grown, so has the distance from those below. That's why Romney's new attack may work.
- rayward
August 8, 2012 at 11:31am
Whenever I hear or read a Republican blame poor people for our troubles, it reminds me of the Smothers Brothers routine in which Tommy describes poor people as less ons because, being poor, they have less clothes on. And on and on goes Tommy about the less ons he encounters on the street. Finally Dick asks Tommy about the rich people he encounters on the street, who Tommy tells us are the more ons.
- rayward
August 8, 2012 at 11:44am
If Romney used this in the closing weeks of the campaign, it could have been very effective. But this is certainly "cultural dynamite" that will now be dissected over the months ahead and eventually understood as both a lie and as borderline racist.
- polcereal
August 8, 2012 at 11:56am
I think this is a sign of Romney's weakness, not strength. As polcereal notes, this is an attack that could be more effective late in the campaign as a way to hit Obama on a cultural wedge issue and would be hard to pin down amid the general din. By releasing it now, it is a stark departure from Romney's hitherto economy-focused campaign. Why give up your best line of argument against Obama -- that he hasn't fixed the economy four years after taking office -- for something that will re-insert the popular Bill Clinton into the election narrative (to be inexplicably countered by the epically unpopular Newt Gingrich)?? And where Romney himself and dozens of Republican governors have asked for similar waivers as the ones he is cricizing now, thereby reinforcing the hypocrisy and opportunism angles that have sunk in with so many voters? The media are already reporting this in a way that is not favorable to the GOP, which means that the attack is not likely to penetrate outside the GOP base and otherwise persuaded Romney voters. The best reason I can think of for why Romney is using this now is that Romney's attack with "You didn't build that" is running out of steam and did not give him a tangible lift in the polls against Obama for the past month. So he is on the hunt for new cultural-style story lines, and will invent them where Obama doesn't give him an opening with his own words. But at least "You didn't build that" was coupled with an economy-focused message -- that Obama has failed as an economic leader because he doesn't appreciate what business contributes to American prosperity. This new attack isn't coupled with anything economic-related, which strongly suggests that the economic attacks don't seem to be working against Obama.
- wildboy
August 8, 2012 at 12:24pm
This is a sign of desperation (recent polling has been unkind to Romney for the most part, and time is running out). That doesn't make it less odious, but it is worth pointing out that it comes before the conventions, not after. It's a base pushing dog whistle, for sure, but if Jeremiah Wright couldn't do it, I doubt this will either, especially if the Obama people push back hard. They can advertise too, after all. Watch for something with quotes from pieces like this.
- timteeter
August 8, 2012 at 12:58pm
Not sure why the Republicans are suspicious of Obama's intent here. Obama not interested in increasing welfare rolls even though he: - Has presided over the largest increase in foodstamps in history - has presided over the largest increase in Soc Sec disability in history Clearly, Obama's motives are pure and has no intent of creating additional parasites to vote for him
- mr_rationale
August 8, 2012 at 1:39pm
What really is hypocritical (setting aside the lies part), is that the Federal Government is allowing the states to tailor their requirements. Devolving power from the Feds to the States. What Republicans are always screaming about. Key words in the memo: "effective" "innovative" "improve". The Obama campaign should come out with an aid saying that Romney opposes ieffectiveness, innovation, and improvements, and wants to centralize power in Washington.
- dubyadoubte
August 8, 2012 at 2:06pm
Oh, and don't worry Rat. Voter ID laws and last minute purging of the eligible voter rolls will filter out the parasites. The GOP vision for America: A country where it's easier for a psychotic to buy a machine gun than it is to vote.
- dubyadoubte
August 8, 2012 at 2:10pm
Mitt Romney is gay. He lived with another man in a single bedroom apartment for many, many years, even going abroad (in France no less) with a man, traveling everywhere with him, sleeping with him in the same bedroom. Look, lets be just as big a set of assholes as they are. Let Romney publicly state that he is not gay, that his gay bashing as a young man was based on nothing except pure hatred and bullying, not self loathing.
- blackton
August 8, 2012 at 3:35pm
Starting to run out of words with which to discuss Romney and his odious lying, not to mention the truly offensive dog whistles and attacks on "culture." I hope Bill Clinton is featured in some ads, vigorously disputing Romney's mendacious assertions. PS does anybody still think Romney is either moderate or decent? I don't.
- Sophia
August 8, 2012 at 3:48pm
What is it with this guy? “Entrepreneurs and business people around the world and here at home think that at some point America is going to become like Greece or like Spain or Italy, or like California — just kidding about that one, in some ways," Romney said, laughing along with audience members in Iowa. Hardy-harr. Granted, he never had a shot at winning California, but this isn’t Saturday night at The Improv. Nor is it a visit to the U.K.
- OkiSaru
August 8, 2012 at 5:19pm
Mitt's got to disqualify BHO before BHO disqualifies him in the minds of working class swing voters. So he's got to go ugly early. The last week doesn't cut it. The working class types don't like BHO because he didn't fix the economy. And they don't like Mitt because he is a rapacious vulture capitalist typical of the greedy bastards that caused this mess. How do you get them to jump for your guy--if they are not so turned off that they stay home? For Mitt the answer is race baiting slander, and lots of it. Expect volley after volley of this reprehensible stuff. They are Republicans, they have a rich tradition to uphold.
- Vogelfam
August 8, 2012 at 6:04pm
mr_rationale, G.W. Bush: - presided over the largest increase in food stamps in history. - presided over the largest increase in Social Security disability in history. And Romney will do the same, if he wins in November. As will every succeeding president. It seems that the capitalists in this country (who have over $2.2 trillion in the bank) don't want Americans to have jobs, so it's up to the government to support out-of-work or low-income people. Many people on disability would work if they got a living wage. In fact, some of them have part-time jobs, with a corresponding decrease in their government benefits. You'll have to talk to the anti-American capitalists in our country to solve the job problem. Many of them seem to want to hire Third World children for 10 cents an hour, which, of course, as an extreme Republican interested in profits above all else, you'll have to agree with.
- magboy47.
August 8, 2012 at 8:41pm
Or, they so break the backs of the American people that pretty soon we're working for 10 cents an hour; is this their plan? I think so. And, women will stfu, ditto minorities. Alas.
- Sophia
August 8, 2012 at 9:29pm
Yes, Sophia, it is their plan. I've been studying the GOP for a couple of decades now, and behind the scenes their plan is to break the backs of American workers, including those in offices. That's why they're systematically working to kill unions. And that's why they love it when their corporate buds import people from other countries to work here, even in high-tech industries. The GOP does envision Americans being employed again, but with much less power and earning ability.
- magboy47.
August 9, 2012 at 12:51am