Talk about an opportunity squandered. Andrea Mitchell has Rick Santorum on her camera and in her sights. Santorum repeats the lie yet again about the welfare work waivers granted to Republican governors at their request, dismissing those requests as what you'd expect from governors.
This is, of course, not true, as the LA Times managed to report accurately:
“This summer he showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare,” Santorum said, referring to Obama.
“I helped write the welfare reform bill; we made the law crystal-clear: No president can waive the work requirement. But as with his refusal to enforce our immigration laws, President Obama rules like he is above the law.”
In fact, Obama did not waive the work requirement.
His administration in July issued a letter to state governments saying that the Department of Health and Human Services would consider requests from states to experiment with new ways to fulfill the work requirements. The letter said that in order to receive waivers to carry out the experiments, states would have to show that their plans would move more welfare recipients into jobs than existing policies.
See how easy that was, Andrea? All you had to do was ask Rick Santorum why he was intentionally misstating what the administration did, and point out that he was being inaccurate. But instead, you go to weird places, like asking "what up wit 'dat?" like you're trying to be some kind of hipster.
Is it too much to ask for our political reporters to actually call out the lies? Is this something that's a privilege instead of the norm? I get so tired of reporters like Andrea just allowing these things to pass as though they're fact. It takes three seconds to actually get a fact in there somewhere.
Do it.
