Obama chose one of the those few vice presidents who will never be forgotten and the news media followers are focused on Romney’s selection? Even if the Bain outsourcing were not a lie what does Obama have in the way of accomplishments to campaign on? Continuing to bi-itch about the GOP being the party unwilling to compromise and act in a bipartisan fashion Obama has, for far too long, ignored Congress altogether, writing backdoor closet Exec Orders.
He bypassed Congress and moved into Libya, empowered the EPA, and signed the Dream Act. Last week, in secret, he literally exploded one of Congress’s most successful bipartisan acts, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), issuing waivers to remove work participation requirements. As a result of that 1996 Act welfare applications were reduced by more than 50%, almost 3 million. It did it in less than 4 years and it was the first out of more than 70 others to be successful.
Let’s focus on what Obama did to gut it.
Heritage: “Section 1115 states that “the Secretary may waive compliance with any of the requirements” of specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: Any provision of law that can be waived under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself. The work provisions of the TANF program are contained in section 407 (entitled, appropriately, “mandatory work requirements”). Critically, this section, as well as most other TANF requirements, are deliberately not listed in section 1115; they are not waiveable.
In establishing TANF, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the TANF program from the section 1115 waiver authority. They did not want the law to be rewritten at the whim of Health and Human Services (HHS) bureaucrats. Of the roughly 35 sections of the TANF law, only one is listed as waiveable under section 1115. This is section 402.
Section 402 describes state plans—reports that state governments must file to HHS describing the actions they will undertake to comply with the many requirements established in the other sections of the TANF law. The authority to waive section 402 provides the option to waive state reporting requirements only, not to overturn the core requirements of the TANF program contained in the other sections of the TANF law.”
To protect the integrity of this bill from future administrations it was written such that work requirements were defined in a separate section and not waiveable. Obama made recess appointments while Congress was in session, the sky is the limit, the law is no barrier. What is Romney doing with his money? What is Obama doing with ours?
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Posted on July 14, 2012
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