The Romney campaign is using one of President Obama’s allies, Bill Clinton, against him once again in a new ad released on Tuesday, this time targeting welfare reform.
The 30-second spot, “Right Choice,” goes back to 1996 when Clinton worked with Congressional Republicans to “end welfare as we know it … by requiring work for welfare,” the ad says.
When Obama came into office, the ad claims, he “announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.”
“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job,” the narrator says. “They just send you your welfare check. And welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.”
A common line of attack for Democrats is that Republicans will “end Medicare as we know it.” Team Romney is throwing part of that line back at the Obama campaign, saying the president “ended welfare as we know it.”
In a statement, campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Romney would ensure people have the “dignity of a job and not just a handout.”
As governor of Massachusetts, however, Romney joined 28 other Republican governors supported a similar waiver proposal to the Obama administration's directive, the Huffington Post reports.
“In the latest example of Mitt Romney not telling the truth, he falsely attacks the President for weakening welfare to work requirements," Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement. "The truth is that the President is giving states additional flexibility only if they move more people from welfare to work – not fewer. As Governor, Romney asked for even greater flexibility to waive the central part of the law by letting people receive benefits for an indefinite period and as HHS has said, his waiver request wouldn't be approved today because it weakened the law too much. By falsely attacking a policy that both he and his Republican allies have supported for years, Romney is once again flip flopping on a position he took in Massachusetts, and demonstrating that he lacks the core strength and principles the nation needs in a President."
The Obama campaign is holding events across the country today, in states like New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Colorado, with surrogates touting the president’s work for the middle class.
The Romney campaign did not say in which states the ad is running.
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