Purple wrote:I think this particular one is pushing it, DF. A reach. She never asserts in the ad that Romney was bad for her or her business, merely bad for job growth in Mass. generally and other sins like favoring the wealthy. There's nothing terribly deceptive or low here - certainly not compared to some other ads.

He swore to uphold the laws of the US. Is he doing that?

A memo from George Sheldon, the acting assistant secretary at HHS, said the department wanted to give states more flexibility in meeting those requirements. The memo notifies states "of the Secretary’s willingness to exercise her waiver authority ... to allow states to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families

Doctor Fate, on 28 Aug 2012, 11:10 am: wrote:Politifact, which tilts a bit to the left, rates all these claims about Romney's numbers...

Doctor Fate on 28 Aug 2012, 4:17 pm: wrote:[Politifact is] not reliable at all.

danivon wrote:So, unless someone can show otherwise, the waiver appears to be within 'THE LAW', rather than a breach of it. Neither the drafter of the memo, nor Karen Sibellius (let alone the President) appear to have broken any oaths.

Of the roughly 35 sections of the TANF law, only one is listed as waiveable under section 1115: section 402, which describes the reports that state governments must file to HHS describing the actions they will undertake to comply with the requirements established in the TANF law. The authority to waive section 402 provides the option to waive state reporting requirements only, not to overturn the core requirements of the TANF program contained in the other sections of the TANF law.
The HHS directive asserts that because the work requirements (established in section 407) are an item that state governments must report on in section 402, and HHS has the authority to waive section 402, all of the work requirements can be waived. This removes the core of the TANF program; TANF becomes a blank slate that HHS bureaucrats and liberal state bureaucrats can rewrite at will.
Congressional Research Service: “There Are No TANF Waivers”
In a December 2001 document,[1] the non-partisan Congressional Research Service clarified that the limited authority to waive state reporting requirements in section 402 does not grant authority to override work and other major requirements in the other sections of the TANF law (sections that were deliberately not listed under the section 1115 waiver authority):
Technically, there is waiver authority for TANF state plan requirement; however, [the] major TANF requirements are not in state plans. Effectively, there are no TANF waivers.
If Congress had wanted HHS to be able to waive the TANF work requirements laid out in section 407, it would have listed that section as waiveable under section 1115. It did not. The HHS action to waive the TANF work requirement blatantly violates the intent and letter of the law.
Welfare Reform Under Clinton
The underlying concept of welfare reform was that able-bodied adults should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare aid. The welfare reform law is often characterized as simply giving state governments more flexibility in operating welfare programs, but this is a serious misunderstanding. While the new law (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) did grant states more flexibility in some respects, the core of the act was the creation of rigorous new federal work standards that state governments were required to implement.