President Barack Obama delivers remarks during a campaign "grassroots event" at James Day Park July 5, 2012 in Parma, Ohio.
In August, Romney released an ad charging that Obama had “gutted” the work requirements for welfare claims. In truth, all Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services had done was grant waivers to states whose governors – including some Republicans — had long been asking for flexibility in making welfare-to-work more effective at ending dependency. The President was allowing states to tinker with the program, established by a 1996 landmark law signed by Bill Clinton, at their behest. The ad inflamed the segment of the conservative base already convinced that Obama was pandering to people who simply want handouts. A Romney adviser insisted the campaign wouldn’t be “dictated by fact-checkers,” and crowed that the ad was the candidate’s most effective of the cycle. Maybe so. But it simply wasn’t true.