Paul Ryan’s History On Welfare Undermines Romney’s Attack On Obama
Mitt Romney has spent the week characterizing President Obama’s decision to grant waivers to states seeking innovative solutions for meeting the work requirements in welfare reform as gutting the program. In reality, the administration would require participating states “to increase the number of people transitioning from welfare to work by 20 percent” and require states to “demonstrate clear progress” in the first year of the waiver. Interestingly, Romney’s newly-minted Vice Presidential running-mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), adopted a different approach as a congressman during the Bush administration. In 2002, Ryan folded a provision into a House-backed version of President Bush’s welfare reauthorization bill that provided his home state “a significant break in meeting new federal work rules,” lowering the work requirement from 70 percent to just 45 percent. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (4/3/2002): Those measures — patterned after a Bush administration plan — require states to ...