Rod Boshart, CR Gazette –
Republican Mitt Romney pledged Wednesday to set an economic course if elected president in November that will foster more jobs and more take-home pay for middle-class workers by removing government impediments to business growth.
The presumptive GOP president nominee touted his five-point plan for economic rebound that he said would create 12 million new jobs in his first term. He said his approach to build a stronger middle class would hinge on bolstering America’s energy independence, giving adults and children the skills to succeed, cutting the federal deficit, championing small businesses and creating a trade policy that works for America rather than competing nations taking U.S. jobs.
“My priority is jobs. My priority is more jobs and more take-home pay,” Romney told nearly 500 supporters who withstood sticky conditions in a downtown school auditorium that lacked aid conditioning.
The former Massachusetts governor told key swing state voters that President Obama has failed to deliver on his campaign promises in driving up the country’s deficit and debt while failing to reduce unemployment or spur an economic rebound heading into an election that offers a “choice between two different paths.”
“This is a difficult time for a lot of Americans,” he said.
Romney touched on his latest criticism that the Obama administration had weakened work requirements for welfare reform during his 30-minute campaign speech. He contended Obama opposed the work requirement when he was a U.S. senator and used “very careful executive action” last month that would “make America more of a nation of dependency.” He pledged to restore it and end Obama’s health-care reform if elected.
However, former President Clinton issued a statement Wednesday saying the GOP candidate’s contention is “not true.”
“The recently announced waiver policy was originally requested by the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada to achieve more flexibility in designing programs more likely to work in this challenging environment,” Clinton said in a statement. “The administration has taken important steps to ensure that the work requirement is retained and that waivers will be granted only if a state can demonstrate that more people will be moved into work under its new approach. The welfare time limits, another important feature of the 1996 act, will not be waived.”
Clinton said the erroneous Romney attack ad is “especially disappointing” because the former Massachusetts governor had requested changes in the 1996 welfare reform laws “that could have eliminated time limits altogether. We need a bipartisan consensus to continue to help people move from welfare to work even during these hard times, not more misleading campaign ads,” according to the Clinton statement.
During his speech, Romney claimed the Massachusetts Legislature wanted to take out the work requirement but he vetoed that effort and worked to expand it.
However, Obama supporters say Romney’s ad and comments Wednesday were false and distort the administration’s effort to give states the flexibility they had been seeking to tailor the federal welfare reform program to their individual needs while demanding that states receiving the waiver provide proof their changes increase the work requirement by 20 percent.
