CNN news 2012-10-02 加文本

cnn news 2012-10-02

Hey, I’m Anderson Cooper. Welcome to thepodcast. The bogus claim that we will not die in the campaign trail. We willKeep Them Honest on the airwave. Let’s get start.

We begin tonight Keeping Them Honest on acampaign distortion that will not seem to die, the false claim that PresidentObama is trying to take the work requirement out of welfare. In fact, MittRomney breathed new life into it just a few hours ago right here on cnn. Theother day, on 60 Minutes, in my report, President Obama said that some of his campaignads quote “go overboard.” Well, today in Ohio, cnn’s Jim Acosta asked MittRomney if he was willing to make a similar admission about his ads. Here’s anextended portion of that interview.

Just the other day, you said the presidenthas been trying to fool people with his ads and his speeches about your record.But fact checkers have also taken issue with your ads. Haven't you also playedfast and loose with the facts from time to time?

We've been absolutely spot on. And any timethere is anything that’s been amiss. We correct it or remove it. The president,on the other hand…

Even the welfare ad?

Absolutely. Look, it has been shown timeand again that the president’s effort to take work requirement out of welfareis a calculated move, the same thing he did with regards to food stamps. Hetook work out of welfare, work out of the food stamps requirement. What was theresult? The study shows that twice as many people went from having food stampsto those that are able-bodied to from as a result of that change. Look, takea.. work requirements

But PoliticFact calls it Pants on Fire andThe Washington Post gives it four Pinocchios, they are wrong, is that what youare saying? (They are, they are, you look at the facts.)

Did he take the work requirement out ofwelfare?

I think what the Obama administration hassaid is that, no, they are trying to give governors the flexibility to increasethe amount of work that goes into receiving welfare benefits. You're saying youdon't buy that.

No, no. You always have the capacity to addwork. There has never been a requirement that you can’t have more work. Therequirement that they’re waiving was saying that people don’t have to work toget welfare. That’s the change that they've proposed. I disagree with thatdirection. I think the president is also, I disagree with the direction on thework requirement as it related to food stamps. Look, taking work requirementsout of government assistance is in my opinion a very a very bad course to takeand creates a culture of dependency. We help people who need help. We want tohelp people that need help. But the idea of removing work requirements, Ithink, is a mistake.

Well, Keeping it in mind as you just heard,Jim Acosta there say, PoliticFact gave that claim a rating a Pants on Fire. TheWashington Post gave it four Pinocchios. And FactCheck.org said this, quote, “AMitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted a plan to gutwelfare reform by dropping work requirements. The plan does neither of thosethings. And back to the claim Governor Romney made about correcting ads orstatements if there’s anything factually wrong or amiss, as he said, Jim Acostacalled and e-mailed the Romney campaign to ask if they could give any examplesof that happening. So far, he’s gotten no response. Jim Acosta joins me now, sodoes Lori Robertson, managing editor of FactCheck.org. So Jim, you pressedGovernor Romney specifically on that welfare ad which as we said independentfact checkers have said was false. He didn’t back down. Not only did he notback down. He seemed to double down on it.

That’s right, Anderson. He did not backaway from that statement at all and as a matter of fact, this is a prettysteady and constant claim that he makes out on the campaign trail. He talksabout it at his campaign rallies. He talks about it in interviews. And sothat’s why we asked him about it, because it struck us on the campaign planethe other day when he first made his charge that the president has been tryingto fool people with the president’s speeches and with the president’s ads aboutthe Romney record. We thought it would be appropriate to go back to him and sayhey, wait a minute. Haven’t some of your ads been called into question by thesefact checkers? And, as you said, he just went on to say in that interview thatwhen ads were found to need corrections or be removed, that’s what the campaigndid. But we went back, we haven’t found any cases like that. We have asked, Ihave asked three separate Romney campaign officials to get back to me with somekind of citation or example. They just haven’t done that at this point,Anderson.

Lori, your organization analyzed that ad,the Romney’s welfare ad. The ad makes two points, that President Obama gutswelfare and that he drops the work requirements in order to receive welfare.Neither of those claims is true, correct?

Yes, that’s correct. They’re not true.Instead, what the Obama administration policy calls for is a waiver programwhere states can apply for a waiver from work requirement rules, but, inexchange, they have to come up with some kind of plan to more efficientlypromote work. You know, what we found it that only 29% of people receiving cashassistance were meeting that work requirement when Obama took office.