http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt4bputrSZs&list=PL823CC97C6B3DFC35&index=1&feature=plcp

Marking the 16th anniversary of the passage of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s vaunted welfare reform bill, the Republican National Committee lashed out at President Obama for ending welfare-to-work requirements.

Titled “Never Happened,” the RNC’s latest ad shows Clinton speaking on C-SPAN while signing his bipartisan welfare reform bill.

“This new bill restores America’s basic bargain of providing opportunity and, in return, demanding responsibility,” Clinton said. “This bill will help people go to work so they can stop drawing a welfare check and start drawing a paycheck.”

It contrasts this with a 1998 CNN interview of Obama during his tenure in the Illinois state Senate where he said he wasn’t “a huge supporter” of Clinton’s welfare reform.

A banner of text below the President says, “If Barack Obama had his way” – as it cuts to a clip of Clinton discussing the bill – “this day would have never happened.”

In a press release from the RNC accompanying the release of the video, Chairman Reince Priebus said Obama supported a welfare system where recipients depended on the government for assistance.

“It’s clear President Obama’s approach to getting America working again is failing miserably as record numbers of people are on welfare,” Preibus said. “It’s time we change direction and elect the Romney-Ryan ticket that will restore the work requirement to welfare and get America back to work.”

But as PoliticsPA previously reported, the claims made in the RNC’s ad are shaky. The July mandate waived federal work requirements, but now requires that state officials articulate their own work programs – and they cannot receive the waiver unless the Governor pledges to increase the number of recipients moving from welfare to work by 20 percent.

In fact, as Governor of Massachusetts, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney joined other state leaders in a request for more latitude in meeting work requirements mandated under Clinton’s welfare reform legislation.