One of the signature dishonest (of many) tales told by Ronald Reagan was one of some Chicago woman who was able to put together enough fraudulent participation in enough government programs to net more than $100K per year. Even as Reagan never named this woman and no one could find a public record of anyone who was that productive in getting government assistance. Certainly no one who was caught and tried for the fraud that this would have represented. This exaggerated tale was often repeated, never substantiated but it did its job — tap into existing resentments and stereotypes of welfare cheats — even though the typical welfare recipient never looked the way the stereotype had it. It was more dogwhistle politics from the ultimate dogwhistler — one who kicked off his campaign at the Neshoba County State Fair (county where Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were murdered), calling for a reinstatement of “state’s rights”. This was,of course, a coded message promising these folks to roll back the rights the Feds were giving to minorities. And now that he is cornered on the issue of his tax releases, Mitt Romney has decided that the Gipper’s dogwhistles can work for him too.
Romney’s campaign has released an ad that claims that the Obama Administration is fundamentally changing the welfare program (actually it is called TANF now) to eliminate the work requirement of the program. This is a false claim, of course:
The claim that the administration’s changes amount to an “end” to welfare aren’t new — they popped up in July when they were first announced. But they are especially misleading given that the move by the Department of Health and Human Services came in response to requests from at least two Republican governors in Utah and Nevada, who complained paperwork requirements and narrow participation metrics were hampering their ability find recipients work. This had been a complaint from Republican-led states in the past: Romney himself signed a letter with 28 other Republican governors in 2005 requesting Congress grant waivers to allow more flexibility in administering the program.
Did you get that? A couple of GOP governors asked for some flexibility in reaching their TANF goals and Mitt Romney — Supersonic Lying Machine — spins this up to feed into the right-wing narrative that somehow President Black Man is raking money from hard working white people to send to the lazy homeboys and homegirls. Romney is even working at getting Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich into the act, trying to pretend that the effort to provide these Governors with some additional flexibility on this program somehow makes Obama the Liberalist President Ever.
We’re supposed to forget that Romney asked for a similar waiver when he was Governor of Massachusetts, even though we are not supposed to talk about those days. But did you catch that Romney’s TANF program gave free and/or subsidized cars to some TANF participants? Cost them $1M over three years.
So what does it say about the Romney campaign that they are reduced to Lee Atwater’s old playbook? For folks who were highly confident that all they had to do was point to the economy to win their way to the White House, this move looks alot like flop sweat to me.