CNN 2012-08-13

Welcome to “Keeping Them Honest” tonight, two times with two powerful presidential campaign as one from each side. Now each one goes straight for the guts² seeking to enforce negative views about other governor Mitt³ Romney over President Barack Obama. It’s a piece of a political fitter it’s tour to political welfare, each one is formidable, and each one is false as it’s not true. Tonight Keeping Them Honest, we will confront the defenders⁴ of these stupid ads and as always, we’re not taking political sides. We’re simply trying to report facts. We begin tonight with the new Mitt Romney ad. 

 

 

 

In 1996, President Clinton and a bipartisan Congress helped end welfare as we know it, by requiring work for welfare. But on July 12th, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut¹ welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send your welfare check. And welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare. 

 

Well, in a moment, you’ll hear from Newt Gingrich who joins us to defend that ad. But it also makes a pretty stunning⁵ envision about whether that ad he’s defending is strictly⁶ speaking through the facts. But first, I want to show you how Mitt Romney is campaigning on the claims made in that very ad. 

 

 

 

With the very careful executive action, he removed the requirement of work from welfare. It’s wrong to make any change that would make America more of a nation of government dependency. We must restore and I will restore work into welfare. 

 

 

 

Now listening to that and watching the ad, you would think that the White House with a sweep of the pen somehow managed to undo⁷ all your elected representatives, Democrats⁸ and Republicans, accomplished⁹ back in the late 90s on welfare reform. You get the impression the Obama administration wants an America where hardworking Americans pay taxes and lazy ones sit around collecting welfare. And in case you miss the implications, Romney’s surrogate Newt Gingrich today spelled it all out. 

 

 

 

I think on the hard left there is an unending desire to create a dependent America. It’s not just that Obama is radical¹⁰ but the people he appoints are even more radical. 

 

 

 

Well, obviously, the White House, the Obama campaign, strongly disagreed. And they are not alone. A string of fact checkers have blasted the ad as false. Political facts gave us pants on fire rating. The Washington Post fact guy rated in with four Pinocchios. That’s their rating system. What， in fact， the White House and the department of health and human services proposed doing, was give governors more flexibility¹¹ to tailor programs for their own states. And these were changes, by the way, requested by the Republican governors Utah and Nevada. But what about this claim?

 

 

 

If President Obama didn’t want people to think that he was going to waive¹² the central work requirement in welfare reform, his administration shouldn’t have written a memo¹³ saying it was going to waive the work requirements in welfare reform. 

 

 

 

Well, Keeping Them Honest, here’s the relevant portion from that very memo from the Department of Health and Human Services. And I quote, HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation¹⁴ requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals. So the administration’s insisting they aren’t trying to waive the work requirement. They are in fact trying to make it less bureaucratic¹⁵ and more effective precisely¹⁶ what those Republican state governors had asked for. As we said, Newt Gingrich is defending the ad, going beyond to this as well in some respect. But as you will see later on in this interview,speaker Gingrich who I talked to just a short time ago, also makes a surprising admission. I spoke¹⁷ with the former presidential candidate just a short time ago. 

 

 

 

Mr. Speaker, so this ad says, I quote, under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job, they just send your welfare check. Now according to pretty much every non-partisan fact checking organization, that’s not true. President Clinton who signed the law that he worked on it as well said it’s not true. Even Ron Haskins who worked in the original welfare law served with George W. Bush’s welfare policy adviser¹⁸ said quote, there’s no plausible¹⁹ scenario²⁰ under which this new policy constitute any kind of serious attack on welfare reform. Are they all wrong? 

 

 

 

Well, Robert Rector at the heritage foundation who was the originally developer of welfare reform, worked with Governor Reagan, and then President Reagan. He was the first person to come out aggressively and say look, this will in the end gut welfare reform. In this reason, he is pretty straight forward. Once she start allowing states, this is why by the way the law itself does not permit waivers. The president actually could not waive section 407, which says there can’t be any waivers to the work requirement. So he fudged and found a way to get around it which I suspect will turn out to be illegal. Governor McDonald of Virginia comes out and says this is clearly gutting²¹ welfare reform. The two governors that the Obama administration is hiding behind, the governor of Utah and the governor of Nevada, have both come out and said that is not accurate. This is not what they wanted, this is not the flexibility they asked for. And I think that this is gonna become a genuine argument. Those of us who favor welfare reform and work hard to get it felt deeply that particularly in local states if you didn’t have some kind of strong requirement. You know, they used to have thing like getting massage²² counted, going through drug rehab count it as a work program. And it was amazing the range of things prior to 1995, the year 1996 that you could do and pretend they were work. 

1 gut   

n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏

参考例句：

• It is not always necessary to gut the fish prior to freezing.冷冻鱼之前并不总是需要先把内脏掏空。
• My immediate gut feeling was to refuse.我本能的直接反应是拒绝。

2 guts   

v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠

参考例句：

• I'll only cook fish if the guts have been removed. 鱼若已收拾干净，我只需烧一下即可。
• Barbara hasn't got the guts to leave her mother. 巴巴拉没有勇气离开她妈妈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 mitt   

n.棒球手套，拳击手套，无指手套；vt.铐住，握手

参考例句：

• I gave him a baseball mitt for his birthday.为祝贺他的生日，我送给他一只棒球手套。
• Tom squeezed a mitt and a glove into the bag.汤姆把棒球手套和手套都塞进袋子里。

4 defenders   

n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者

参考例句：

• The defenders were outnumbered and had to give in. 抵抗者寡不敌众，只能投降。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• After hard fighting,the defenders were still masters of the city. 守军经过奋战仍然控制着城市。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 stunning   

adj.极好的；使人晕倒的

参考例句：

• His plays are distinguished only by their stunning mediocrity.他的戏剧与众不同之处就是平凡得出奇。
• The finished effect was absolutely stunning.完工后的效果非常美。

6 strictly   

adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地

参考例句：

• His doctor is dieting him strictly.他的医生严格规定他的饮食。
• The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence.客人严格按照地位高低就座。

7 undo   

vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销

参考例句：

• His pride will undo him some day.他的傲慢总有一天会毁了他。
• I managed secretly to undo a corner of the parcel.我悄悄地设法解开了包裹的一角。

8 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

10 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

11 flexibility   

n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性

参考例句：

• Her great strength lies in her flexibility.她的优势在于她灵活变通。
• The flexibility of a man's muscles will lessen as he becomes old.人老了肌肉的柔韧性将降低。

12 waive   

vt.放弃，不坚持(规定、要求、权力等)

参考例句：

• I'll record to our habitat office waive our claim immediately.我立即写信给咱们的总公司提出放弃索赔。
• In view of the unusual circumstances,they agree to waive their requirement.鉴于特殊情况，他们同意放弃他们的要求。

13 memo   

n.照会，备忘录；便笺；通知书；规章

参考例句：

• Do you want me to send the memo out?您要我把这份备忘录分发出去吗？
• Can you type a memo for me?您能帮我打一份备忘录吗？

14 participation   

n.参与，参加，分享

参考例句：

• Some of the magic tricks called for audience participation.有些魔术要求有观众的参与。
• The scheme aims to encourage increased participation in sporting activities.这个方案旨在鼓励大众更多地参与体育活动。

15 bureaucratic   

adj.官僚的，繁文缛节的

参考例句：

• The sweat of labour washed away his bureaucratic airs.劳动的汗水冲掉了他身上的官气。
• In this company you have to go through complex bureaucratic procedures just to get a new pencil.在这个公司里即使是领一支新铅笔，也必须通过繁琐的手续。

16 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

17 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

18 adviser   

n.劝告者，顾问

参考例句：

• They employed me as an adviser.他们聘请我当顾问。
• Our department has engaged a foreign teacher as phonetic adviser.我们系已经聘请了一位外籍老师作为语音顾问。

19 plausible   

adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的

参考例句：

• His story sounded plausible.他说的那番话似乎是真实的。
• Her story sounded perfectly plausible.她的说辞听起来言之有理。

20 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

21 gutting   

n.去内脏v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的现在分词 )；取出…的内脏

参考例句：

22 massage   

n.按摩，揉；vt.按摩，揉，美化，奉承，篡改数据

参考例句：

• He is really quite skilled in doing massage.他的按摩技术确实不错。
• Massage helps relieve the tension in one's muscles.按摩可使僵硬的肌肉松弛。