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.
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