The welfare lie that Romney and Ryan won't let die

Careful, Romney. Your racism is showing. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are both back with the big welfare lie, after leaving it alone at their convention. Both of them were interviewed before President Clinton's speech last night, and because they were somehow still harboring the hope that Clinton was going to undermine President Obama in his speech, they both brought up the lie, Ryan first, then Romney.
 

"Well, I'm not sure exactly what President Clinton will say, but there's no question that President Obama's decision to say that we're going to allow waivers or excuses from work requirements in welfare was designed to shore up part of his base that may not be inclined to go out and vote in the same kind of energy and passion as they did four years ago. [...]"

Back with the lie, dog-whistle blaring. Let's just let the master deal with that. President Clinton, the floor is yours:

CLINTON: Let's look at the other big charge the Republicans made. It's a real doozy.

They actually have charged and run ads saying that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions of people from welfare to work. Wait. You need to know, here's what happened.

Nobody ever tells you what really happened. Here's what happened. When some Republican governors asked if they could have waivers to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama administration listened, because we all know it's hard for even people with good work histories to get jobs today, so moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge. And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment.

Now, did -- did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work, not less. [...]

But I am telling you, the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true. But they keep on running ads claiming it.

You want to know why? Their campaign pollster said, "We are not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."

Now, finally I can say: That is true. I -- I -- I couldn't have said it better myself. [...]

This one isn't going to go away, because the Romney campaign has no shame. They don't care if they're being called liars. They don't care that they're walking the knife's edge of out-and-out racism. They're losing and they're desperate and they will say anything.