Santorum: Administration Breaking Law by Waiving Welfare Work Requirement

(CNSNews.com) – Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said that the Obama administration’s move to waive the work requirements for federal welfare recipients is “against the law” and an “abuse of presidential power.”

“It is against the law,” Santorum said on a conference call Thursday.

Santorum, one of the chief architects of welfare reform in 1996, said that Obama’s move was an “abuse of presidential power” and part of a “pattern” of increasing government dependency.

“This is something that is an abuse of presidential power – number one – and number two, it is clear that when you look at the fact that the president waived work requirements on food stamps in 2009 and has, again, to increase the amount of government dependency, to increase the amount of government paying people, all over this country, and the number of people [on welfare] continuing to go up to astronomical levels, the highest levels in the history of this country of the percentage of people who are on some sort of government program,” Santorum said.

“You’re seeing a pattern here, and this pattern is now made whole in one of the cruelest ways,” he added.

In July, the Obama administration announced that it would issue waivers to states of the federal requirements that welfare recipients find work or participate in job training.

Santorum, part of the congressional Republican majority who passed the landmark reform in 1996, said that Congress had “specifically” prohibited any administration from trying to get around the strict work requirements.

“I know people say ‘well all he [Obama] did is provide a waiver. We specifically said in that law that no waivers would be allowed. You want to talk about legislative history? If the president wants to look at the legislative history on this, it is full of ‘we do not want waivers to this. This is something we will require,’” Santorum said.

He pushed back on the administration’s defense of the waivers, saying that it just wasn’t credible for the president, who had made great use of broad federal mandates, to claim he was now in favor of state flexibility.

“To give the secretary of Health and Human Services [the federal agency overseeing welfare] – who certainly has a long track record of not allowing flexibility – and this administration not allowing flexibility in a whole variety of programs to say now that all they’re interested in is flexibility in the states when they’ve had an administration that has been rife with increasing federal requirements – limiting state flexibility with federal mandates – that now all of a sudden on this key, central point of work that they’re going to strengthen the work requirements with this waiver. That’s absurd.”

Santorum’s comments come amid growing Republican pressure over the waivers, with GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney attacking the president for allowing states to get around the strict work standards.

House Republicans introduced a bill in July to prevent the waivers and rescind any that may have been granted. While that effort may not survive in the Senate, Romney and his allies have moved to make the issue a key point in the November election.

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