This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, August 9, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama is wrapping himself in the mantle of Bill Clinton, though it's

not clear what Clinton-era policies the current president wants to celebrate.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Comments.

Welfare Reform has generally been successful,

although perhaps not as successful as we would like.

It has succeeded in reducing the roles, the number of people on welfare,

while at the same time the number of people in poverty

did not significantly increase immediately following the enactment.

Poverty rates have gone up since, but that's been amidst a loosening of the welfare requirements.

So we can generally say that it helped people get off of welfare and into work.

Mitt Romney is going around claiming now in ads and in speeches that President Obama is trying to quote unquote

gut the work requirements associated with the welfare programs, the federal programs, and affiliated state programs.

How true is that claim?

Well, 30 second political ads are probably not the greatest source of subtlety when it comes to campaign promises and

campaign claims.

That said, he is raising an important issue here.

The President has issued a new directive making it easier for states to waive the work requirements

that are part of the welfare reform law.

Now the president says well trust me I'm not going to use those waivers to make it

any easier to get off the work requirements. I'm just trying to give

some flexibility to the states and states have requested this flexibility

...