Rush plays 2 clips, one of Jay Carney saying that Republican Governors requested this welfare reform policy that Obama implemented and one of Ben LaBolt spouting similar talking points and then reads from Heritage to show they are lying, that these Republicans governors in fact did not request this:
Rush is right they are lying, but he’s gotten a couple of things mixed up here. First, there are 2 separate lies they are telling with regard to Republican governors. The first one is that one you heard Jay Carney assert, that two Republican Governors, Herbert from Utah and Sandoval from Nevada, requested these reforms. Politico refuted this one yesterday noting first Sandoval’s response to Carney:
“Nevada did not request a waiver and despite repeated solicitations by the administration to seek a waiver, Nevada HHS has consistently notified the Administration that Nevada has no intention of requesting one,” Sandoval spokeswoman Mary-Sarah Kinner told POLITICO.
“The Obama administration’s attempt to portray Nevada’s comments as anything more than an attempt to increase efficiency and improve outcomes for our programs is a gross mischaracterization to advance its own agenda,” Kinner said.
Utah on the other hand didn’t dispute it:
Utah did not dispute Carney’s characterization, touting the flexibility offered by Utah’s request.
“The cornerstone of Utah’s philosophy is that all who can work should work, and that states are laboratories of innovation. Utah actively promotes these core beliefs by advocating for state and federal policies that support these principles,” Herbert said in a letter released last month.
OK that’s the first one. The second lie was what Carney has said in the past and what other surrogates have repeated, and that is that Romney requested these waivers when he was governor. And the July 19 article that Rush read from Heritage’s Robert Rector addressed that lie and not the one above:
HHS responded that Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, sought a waiver from federal work requirements in 2005.
In support of this concoction, the Administration provided a letter from Romney and 28 other Republican governors to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R–TN) from that year.
But this letter makes no mention at all of waiving work requirements under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. In fact, the legislation promoted in the letter—the Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone (PRIDE) Act—actually would have toughened the federal work standards. It proposed raising the mandatory participation rates imposed on states from 50 percent to 70 percent of the adult TANF caseload and increasing the hours of required work activity.
The governors’ letter actually contradicts the Administration’s main argument: If the law has always permitted HHS to waive the work requirements, then why didn’t the governors just request waivers from then-President George W. Bush? Why would legislation be needed?
So yes, in almost all counts the Obama administration is lying about this and to that extent Rush is right. He’s just mixed the lies and responses up a little.