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• BOSTON (AP) -- Mitt Romney, who is trying to gain an edge in the presidential contest with the disputed charge that President Barack Obama is giving welfare recipients a free ride, can point to his own record of pushing for tighter welfare rules during four years as governor of Massachusetts.
• Romney fought to require single parents with children as young as a year old to work to get welfare benefits if they could obtain state-subsidized child care. He also opposed efforts to allow time spent in job training or education programs to count toward the state's 20-hour weekly work requirement for welfare recipients, and pushed for a five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits.
• At the time, Massachusetts was one of only five states without a lifetime limit, instead allowing welfare recipients to claim benefits two years out of every five-year period.
• Despite his tougher stand, Romney also tried to shield welfare benefits from budget cuts as the state struggled with sinking revenues.
• "There are a number of areas where I feel significant cuts would be too difficult on such short notice. I did not cut welfare payments," Romney said in a televised address in 2003 explaining his state budget proposal after just four weeks on the job. "In fact, the majority of state programs for the poor and elderly were not touched."

• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama would make tax credits for college expenses permanent and expand Pell grants for students from lower-earning families. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would emphasize the need to curb rising tuitions and growing federal education expenditures that are burdening families and the government.
• The different approaches to coping with rising college costs highlight one way Obama and the Republicans trying to replace him in the White House are vying for young voters. Youth voters leaned heavily toward Obama in his 2008 election victory and still prefer him, according to polls, though less decisively.

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