House Republicans have bill that would end work requirements for welfare

Republican leadership endorses gutting welfare reform. You know how Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan won't stop lying about how President Obama has "gutted" welfare reform by giving states more flexibility on how to administer the work requirement? And how all of the fact-checkers who have checked have said that their claim is bullshit?

Here's another fact-check, about another effort to end the work requirement in welfare reform. Except this time the effort is coming from House Republicans.

The legislation ' H.R. 4297, The Workforce Investment Improvement Act ' was unveiled in March by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and cosponsored by six Republican colleagues. Among them was Education & Workforce Chairman John Kline (R-MN), who passed the bill through his committee in June.

So the bill has made it through the committee, ready for floor action, if the House actually had floor action on anything other than abortion, Obamacare repeal, or naming post offices. That means the bill has the endorsement of the committee of jurisdiction, and the chairman of the committee, a member of  the GOP leadership team. The bill would "workforce training by letting states slash redundant programs and consolidate them with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare program ' into one Workforce Investment Fund (WIF)."

It would also, according to the nonpartisan research arm of the Congress, the Congressional Research Service, get rid of the restrictions in the 1996 welfare law requiring work.

'Thus, for example, if TANF funds were consolidated into the WIF, TANF program requirements (e.g., work requirements) may no longer apply to that portion of funding because the TANF funding would not exist (i.e., it would be part of the WIF and thus subject to WIF program requirements),' CRS concluded in a memo.

Making this all more insane, the Education & Workforce Committee passed legislation Thursday that would block Obama's welfare waivers to states. In other words, Rep. Kline just pushed through his committee a bill that repudiates a bill that he pushed through his committee three months ago. Put that in an ad, Romney.