Romney says Obama favors ‘culture of dependency’

KEN THOMAS

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. — Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney accused Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Tues­day of ditch­ing a long-standing work require­ment for wel­fare recip­i­ents, accus­ing him of fos­ter­ing a “cul­ture of depen­dency” and back­ing up the charge with a new tele­vi­sion commercial.

White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney said the alle­ga­tions were “bla­tantly dis­hon­est … hypocrisy knows no bounds.” He added that Rom­ney, while serv­ing as Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor, had once peti­tioned the White House to loosen employ­ment rules for those on welfare.

Rom­ney made his accu­sa­tion in a rel­a­tively rare occur­rence in the race for the White House — an appear­ance before vot­ers out­side the small group of bat­tle­ground states likely to set­tle the Nov. 6 election.

Illi­nois and its 20 elec­toral votes are polit­i­cally safe ter­ri­tory for Obama in the fall. Rom­ney was there for a fundraiser as well as a stop at a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany, part of the intense com­pe­ti­tion between the two can­di­dates to stock­pile cash for the stretch run to Elec­tion Day.

Rom­ney picked up more than $2 mil­lion dur­ing his swing through Chicago, and another fundrais­ing evening in West Des Moines, Iowa, gave him at least another $1.8 million.

The pres­i­dent was speak­ing at two pri­vate events, one of them a fundraiser, at a hotel a few blocks from the White House. And after being out­raised by Rom­ney in recent months, his cam­paign announced a fundrais­ing “shoot-around” and din­ner in New York on Aug. 22 fea­tur­ing sev­eral pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball stars.

In a race as close as this one, the taunts were get­ting personal.

Rom­ney, inter­viewed on Fox News, said Obama was “say­ing things that are not accu­rate” when it comes to taxes. He referred to a crack the pres­i­dent made on Mon­day night as “Obama-loney,” rhyming it with baloney.

At a fundraiser, Obama called Romney’s tax plan Robin Hood in reverse — “Rom­ney Hood” — and repeated his accu­sa­tion that it would mean tax breaks for the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans while forc­ing the mid­dle class to pay the IRS as much as $2,000 more a year.

The pres­i­dent wants to extend tax breaks due to expire at all income lev­els, except above $200,000 for indi­vid­u­als and $250,000 for a cou­ple. He has made his pro­posal cen­tral to a pitch to mid­dle– and working-class vot­ers as he seeks a sec­ond term with unem­ploy­ment at 8.3 percent.

Rom­ney wants to keep the tax cuts in place at all income lev­els, and has pro­posed an addi­tional 20 per­cent reduc­tion in rates.

Romney’s deci­sion to intro­duce the wel­fare issue into the cam­paign seemed aimed at blue-collar, white working-class vot­ers in a weak econ­omy, and sug­gested that Obama might be gain­ing ground polit­i­cally with his posi­tion on taxes.

It also marked an attempt to take the gloss off the recent announce­ment that for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton will have a prime-time speak­ing slot at the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion in Char­lotte, N.C. early next month.

Appear­ing before hun­dreds of sup­port­ers at a man­u­fac­tur­ing plant near Chicago, Obama’s home­town, the Repub­li­can chal­lenger said bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion signed into law by Clin­ton in 1996 “reformed wel­fare to encour­age peo­ple to work. They did not want a cul­ture of depen­dency to con­tinue to grow in our coun­try,” he said of the then-president and Con­gress, under Repub­li­can con­trol at the time.

He said that, just recently, Obama “has tried to reverse that accom­plish­ment by tak­ing the work require­ment out of wel­fare. That is wrong, and If I’m pres­i­dent, I’ll put work back in wel­fare. …We will end a cul­ture of depen­dency and restore a cul­ture of good, hard work,” he said.

Romney’s new ad but­tressed the point.

“Under Obama’s plan you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you a wel­fare check, and wel­fare to work goes back to being plan old wel­fare,” the announcer says in the commercial.

“Mitt Rom­ney will restore the work requirement.”

Under the law signed by Clin­ton and amended a decade later, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment does not pro­vide a guar­an­teed ben­e­fit to wel­fare recip­i­ents. Instead, the states receive fed­eral funds and are per­mit­ted to estab­lish a vari­ety of pro­grams to ben­e­fit the poor. The gov­ern­ment imposes a limit on the length of time fam­i­lies can receive aid and requires recip­i­ents even­tu­ally to go to work.

The Rom­ney cam­paign cir­cu­lated mate­r­ial dur­ing the day that quoted Obama, then a state sen­a­tor in Illi­nois, as say­ing he “prob­a­bly would have voted against it” if he had been in Congress.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion recently announced plans to issue waivers to states that wanted “to test alter­na­tive and inno­v­a­tive strate­gies, poli­cies and pro­ce­dures” to improve employ­ment among needy fam­i­lies. It said it was act­ing after receiv­ing requests from some of the nation’s gov­er­nors, includ­ing Repub­li­cans in Utah and Nevada. But senior GOP law­mak­ers attacked the move as an attempt to under­mine the welfare-to-work require­ments in effect for more than a decade.

Offi­cials with access to detailed adver­tis­ing infor­ma­tion said it appeared the com­mer­cial was air­ing at heavy lev­els in Col­orado, Florida, Iowa, North Car­olina, New Hamp­shire, Nevada, Ohio and Vir­ginia — states where the race is closest.

Rom­ney was him­self tar­geted with a new ad dur­ing the day, this one launched by Pri­or­i­ties USA Action, a super PAC that sup­ports Obama.

It fea­tures a for­mer Kansas City steel­worker who says his com­pany was taken over in 1993 by a group that included Bain Cap­i­tal, the pri­vate equity firm co-founded by Romney.

“When Mitt Rom­ney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care, and my fam­ily lost their health care,” he said. His wife became ill, but “I think maybe she didn’t say any­thing because she knew we couldn’t afford the insur­ance,” he says. By the time she went to the hos­pi­tal, she was diag­nosed with can­cer and died quickly, he said.

“I do not think Mitt Rom­ney real­izes what he’s done to any­one, and fur­ther­more I do not think Mitt Rom­ney is concerned.”

In response, Ryan Williams, a spokesman for Rom­ney, said Obama’s allies “con­tinue to use dis­cred­ited and dis­hon­est attacks in a con­temptible effort to con­ceal the administration’s deplorable eco­nomic record.”

Both par­ties were flesh­ing out the speak­ing sched­ule for their conventions.

Repub­li­cans said Romney’s most per­sis­tent pri­mary rival, for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia Sen. Rick San­to­rum, would have a turn at the speaker’s podium. So, too, for­mer Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ken­tucky Sen. Rand Paul, a tea party favorite.

For­mer Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter will tape a video mes­sage to be aired in prime time at the Demo­c­ra­tic convention.

Posted by AP News on Aug 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.