Fact Checkers and Experts Agree: GOP Claims on Obama Administration’s Welfare Reform Proposal False

On Thursday, the Education and Workforce Committee and the Ways and Means Committee are scheduled to debate and vote on a Republican resolution that would overturn an Obama administration proposal providing states flexibility to move more Americans from welfare to work. Unfortunately, national Republicans have struggled with accurately describing this proposal. Independent fact checkers and experts have weighed in on their claims and pretty much all agree that they are false.

Here’s a sampling:

  August 28, 2012 Rick Santorum: Pants on Fire!

  August 13, 2012 Bob McDonnell (Va.): False

  August 7, 2012 Mitt Romney: Pants on Fire!

And, a former Republican staffer also agrees, according to FactCheck.org: 

Ron Haskins, a former Republican House committee aide who was instrumental in the 1996 overhaul of the welfare program …said the Romney claim that Obama’s plan will “gut welfare reform” is “very misleading…I do not think it ends welfare reform or strongly undermines welfare reform”

Mitt Romney’s pollster even doubled down on these false statements by saying they “we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” The American people deserve to know the truth. Here are the facts:

FACT: “By granting waivers to states, the Obama administration is seeking to make welfare-to-work efforts more successful, not end them. What’s more, the waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs – HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to welfare law.” – PolitiFact.com, August 28, 2012.

FACT: Work requirements are not simply being ‘dropped.’”– FactCheck.org, August 9, 2012.

FACT:The Obama administration is allowing state waivers from welfare work requirements ‘only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent.’” – PolitiFact.com, September 5, 2012.

Rep. George Miller called the Republican resolution “nothing more than a political stunt” and “wastes precious legislative time when we should be working together to provide solutions for the real problems confronting American families, not fabricated ones. It is just another example of Washington Republicans’ failed leadership on jobs and the economy.”

Read Ranking Members Miller and Levin’s statement on the Republican resolution