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Obama's Work Claim July 2, 2008 Updated: July 25, 2008 His new ad says he "worked his way" through college and law school. His campaign says he had a few summer jobs and once sold newspaper subscriptions while in college. Summary Obama’s latest ad repeats an often-stated claim, saying he "worked his way through college and Harvard Law.” We know Obama took out loans to get himself through school. But the campaign at first provided information on just two jobs Obama had in those years, and they were both in the summer. The ad also says he "passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Actually, the Illinois law was a required follow-up to the 1996 federal welfare reform law worked out by President Clinton and the Republican Congress. Welfare rolls did go down by nearly as much as the ad says, but Obama can't claim sole credit. Update, July 25: Our original story said in the headline that Obama's campaign listed only two summer jobs. Now that a spokesman has provided additional information, we have updated this article accordingly. But it's still a stretch for Obama to say he "worked his way through college." Analysis Obama's new ad, "Dignity," is largely a 30-second version of his last one, "Country I Love." It, too, will be airing in 18 states, according to the presumptive Democratic nominee's campaign. Working to Make It Work
The ad begins with the announcer telling us that Obama "worked his way through college and Harvard Law." Actually, Obama took out loans to get himself through college, as we heard in a 60-second ad his campaign began running last month. We don't know how much assistance his family provided. But "worked his way" through college and law school? The only back-up the campaign provided for this claim was a quote from Obama's book "Dreams from My Father" having to do with a construction job he had one summer while he was in college, and an article mentioning his job as a summer associate one year at a big Chicago law firm. We asked campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor if Obama held jobs during the school year, or other summer jobs, but he said only, "He had the two jobs I told you about." Unless Obama had a good bit more employment than his spokesman was able to describe for us, it's a real stretch to claim he "worked his way" through school. Update, July 25: Three weeks after we posted this story, the Obama campaign listed some additional jobs the candidate held during his college years. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that Obama had three summer jobs Vietor didn’t tell us about for our original article: one at a gift shop in Hawaii after his first year of college; another making sandwiches at a deli counter, also in Hawaii; and a third with a company that processed health records of police or firefighters. In addition, Vietor said, during one school year Obama worked as a telemarketer selling New York Times subscriptions over the phone. Without additional information, which we have asked for but which, so far, has not been provided by the campaign, we haven’t been able to independently verify this information. Had we known this at the time we wrote our story, we might have debated our conclusion about the ad’s claim that Obama “worked his way through college and Harvard Law” more extensively. We have our doubts, though, that the first three positions did much more than help support Obama in the summer between school years; we don’t know about the fourth. We do note, though, that Obama released a new Spanish-language radio ad this week that puts it differently: Obama ad: Through student loans and hard work, he graduated from college.We don’t have any quarrel with that. No More Handouts
As in his last ad, this one touts three bills that Obama "passed," and once again we're not told whether the bills were products of the Illinois Senate or the U.S. Senate. We'll fill you in: In this ad, all three pieces of legislation mentioned were passed in the Illinois Senate. Obama for America Ad: "Dignity"
Obama: I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message. Announcer: He worked his way through college and Harvard Law. Turned down big money offers, and helped lift neighborhoods stung by job loss. Fought for workers’ rights. He passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by eighty percent. Passed tax cuts for workers; health care for kids. As president, he’ll end tax breaks for companies that export jobs, reward those that create jobs in America. And never forget the dignity that comes from work. The first bill that's cited is the 1997 law that created the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program in Illinois. The ad claims Obama "passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by 80 percent." That's going too far. First, the law in question wasn't dreamed up out of thin air by its sponsors. It was the follow-up to the welfare reform act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, that President Clinton signed on Aug. 26, 1996. That law gave states the ability to design their own welfare programs as long as they met certain federal requirements, including limits on how long recipients could get benefits. The bill that Obama cosponsored was Illinois' version. And far from having "passed" the bill single-handedly, Obama was among five Senate sponsors of the measure, as we said previously. It was passed by both chambers of the Illinois Legislature and signed into law by the governor. Also, our friends at PolitiFact talked to an expert who said part of the steep drop in Illinois' numbers was due to other factors, such as a state bureaucracy that took an aggressive approach to ejecting people from the rolls, sometimes erroneously. A Passable Record
Just as in his earlier ad, Obama takes credit for passing "tax cuts for workers." Here, the announcer is talking about the Illinois earned income tax credit, which came into being in 2000. The bill doesn't contain Obama's name as an original sponsor, but according to The Associated Press, he was the linchpin of the effort but let Republicans, who held the Legislature and the governor's mansion, take the lead on it. –by Viveca Novak Sources Toomey, Shamus. "Health Program Expanded." Chicago Daily Herald, 2 July 2003. Robinson, Mike. "Obama got start in civil rights practice." The Associated Press, 20 Feb. 2007. State of Illinois Public Act 90-0017. 90th General Assembly. Public Law 104-193, Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. 104th Congress. "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Work Activities, Excluding Waivers, for Families Meeting the All Family Work Requirements, Fiscal Year 1998," Table 2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Status of TANF Families as Relates to All Families Work Participation Rates, Fiscal Year 2006," Table 3A. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. State of Illinois Public Act 91-0700. 91st General Assembly. State of Illinois Public Act 93-0063. 93rd General Assembly. Related Articles |
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