Several weeks ago, the Romney campaign launched dishonest series of attacks claiming that the Obama administration has “gutted” welfare reform by removing welfare’s work requirements. Early on Wednesday, Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) admitted that the attacks have no basis in reality, a fact already well explained by major media outlets.

“You agree that these claims that the work requirement has been abolished are false?” asked MSNBC’s Chris Jansing. “As far as I have seen,” Brownback replied.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), however, declined to take the same step. Initially, Kasich said that the work requirement had been “eroded.” But after MSNBC’s Chris Matthews played the clip of Brownback’s answer and asked Kasich if he could say the same, Kasich replied that he hasn’t had time to examine the issue. However, he did say that he refused to sign onto a letter that the Romney campaign has been circulating on the welfare issue:

MATTHEWS: Can you give that same answer from what you have seen? They haven’t removed the welfare requirement — work requirement yet? They haven’t done it yet? You say eroded. I don’t know what that means. Is it gone or is it still in place? Can you get welfare without working?

KASICH: I don’t know the answer to that, Chris. In fact, I was asked to sign a letter as I was going out the door to head down to this convention before I had a chance to study the whole issue. I said, look, I’m going to pass on this letter until I understand the whole issue.

Watch it:

Kasich is the governor of a major state, and the Romney campaign has been using this attack for weeks, yet he claims he hasn’t had any time to look into it. But that didn’t stop him from presuming that the claims are true. Campaign officials, meanwhile, have simply laughed off questions about the false ads, while campaign pollster Neil Newhouse told BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

The nation’s five biggest banks agreed to a $25 billion foreclosure fraud settlement back in February that required them to provide $17 billion of mortgage relief to troubled homeowners. However, one of the banks, Bank of America, is hardly holding up its end of the bargain. According to a new report, as of June 30, Bank of America had not modified a single mortgage under the settlement to reduce the amount that a borrower owes:

Bank of America Corp is lagging other banks in quickly executing mortgage modifications required by the U.S. government as part of the $25 billion foreclosure settlement finalized in March, according to a report released on Wednesday…Unlike its competitors, Bank of America did not finalize any modifications of first-lien mortgages and also did not complete any refinances by June 30.

Bank of America admitted earlier this month that it was lagging behind on loan modifications, but this report shows just how incompetent the bank has been when it comes to moving homeowners into more sustainable mortgages. Bank of America does lead the settlement banks affected in getting its borrowers through short sales, but as Firedoglake’s David Dayen explained, “the idea of banks granting short sales as a punishment for defrauding consumers and state courts is ridiculous. They’re all too happy to get a higher price for a short sale than they would get in foreclosure, with the added benefit of never having to take the foreclosed home and maintain it.”

Prior to the settlement, one whistleblower alleged that Bank of America intentionally blocked homeowners from receiving federal mortgage aid. But perhaps all these homeowners simply weren’t willing to erase the mean things they said about Bank of America on Twitter.

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

A recent study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that Mitt Romney’s tax plan, which purports to be “revenue neutral,” would require households with incomes under $200,000 to pay higher taxes, on average, in order to finance tax cuts for the rich. In response, Romney economic advisor Martin Feldstein penned an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal claiming that Romney’s plan does not require such a tax increase.

Though Feldstein uses at least three sleights of hand to obscure the point, his analysis actually confirms TPC’s central finding. Here’s why:

1) Feldstein ignores Romney’s $1 trillion corporate tax cut, which is paid for by individual income tax increases.

Feldstein purports to show how reductions in tax breaks for high-income households could pay for a handful of Romney’s tax policies, including cuts in tax rates for individuals. But Feldstein conveniently ignores Romney’s tax cuts for corporations.

Romney’s plan would give corporations an “immediate” tax cut, cutting their rates from 35 percent to 25 percent. This tax cut would cost $96 billion in 2015 according to the Tax Policy Center (TPC) and more than $1 trillion over ten years. The TPC report did not even factor this massive corporate tax cut in their analysis of Romney’s plan under the very generous assumption that it would be fully paid for by eliminating business tax breaks.

But the Romney campaign has since made clear that the $1 trillion in corporate tax cuts aren’t paid for by any reductions in corporate tax breaks. Therefore, as the TPC researchers have noted, Romney’s corporate tax cuts would require “even larger cuts to tax expenditures [i.e. tax breaks], and correspondingly larger increases in taxes on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers,” than their original study found. Feldstein simply ignores all of this.

2) Feldstein redefines the “middle class.”

In crunching numbers to try to make Romney’s tax plan add up, Feldstein counts only those households with incomes under $100,000 as “middle class.” He purports to demonstrate that Romney’s plan can add up if deductions are eliminated for households over $100,000. But this simply confirms the Tax Policy Center’s conclusion that Romney’s plan does not add up without a tax increase on households with incomes under $200,000. (This table from TPC shows that households in the $100,000-$200,000 range stand to lose much more from the elimination of tax breaks than they would gain from Romney’s tax rate cut.)

Read more

The Romney campaign has been running a series of blatantly false ads claiming that the Obama administration has waived work requirements included in the 1996 welfare reform law. Everyone from independent fact-checkers to major newspapers to President Bill Clinton (who signed the law) have said that the campaign’s attack is untrue.

Last night, however, failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum once again made the false claim, saying “this summer [Obama] showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waving the work requirement for welfare.” But evidently not every member of the Republican party received the memo about how to characterize what the administration did. When asked Wednesday morning whether the welfare claim is a lie, Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) replied, “as far as I have seen”:

JANSING: But you agree that these claims that the work requirement has been abolished are false?

BROWNBACK: As far as I have seen, but I don’t know all of the basis to it. I do know the basis to this dependency on the government and how big the government is and how big the entitlement state is and how much of a debt we’re leaving to our kids.

Watch it:

All the administration’s welfare waivers would do is empower states to innovate with new work strategies. The directive from the administration reads, “The Secretary [of Health and Human Services] is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry.”

Yesterday, the Romney campaign’s political director laughed off a question about the false welfare ads, saying, “I think reasonable people can have a disagreement over this.”