Paul Ryan’s Anti-Poverty Initiative Could Worsen Poverty, Advocates Say

Paul Ryan has taken ownership of a whole “wing” of the Republican Party lately, distinguishing the Paul Ryan wing from the Donald Trump wing (though with the intent to merge, despite Ryan's disavowal of Trump's most recent racist comments). Ryan’s brand of Republicanism has been that of intellectual pursuit, the in-depth study of policy, and a far softer tone than Trump’s. He was praised a few years ago for forging a budget compromise with Democrats after years of gridlock. 

When he took over the Speakership, he said he wanted the House GOP to come up with a policy document stating its proposals for the future so that it could no longer justifiably be called the Party of No. On Tuesday, Ryan released the first part of his six-part agenda, called “A Better Way: Our Vision For a Confident America.”

The first plank of that policy focuses on poverty – a topic that has commanded more attention in the Democratic debates this year than in Republican circles, but which Ryan has tried to push to the forefront within his party. Ryan has made poverty a bit of a signature issue, hosting a series of field hearings on the subject and issuing a “progress report” on the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty.

He recently apologized for calling poor people “takers” for using government assistance programs – though he hasn’t recanted his assertion that poor kids who get free lunch at school have "a full stomach and an empty soul." 

The centerpiece of Ryan’s new anti-poverty initiative is a welfare-to-work requirement reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform agenda 20 years ago. In fact, it pays homage to that program, crediting it with an increase in employment rates for single mothers and a drop in child poverty. Most economists agree, however, that welfare reform wasn’t the reason for these improvements. The entire economy was enjoying the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, buoyed by a huge stock market bubble – a bubble which burst a few years later.

Ryan’s “A Better Way” plan would consolidate multiple assistance programs into one to streamline government functions and give more responsibility to states. This is a plan he first unveiled two years ago. Anti-poverty advocates like Tianna Gaines-Turner say turning these programs into a single block grant to states would weaken the safety net that keeps people out of poverty.

Gaines-Turner says she was the only one of the 17 people who testified at Ryan’s War on Poverty listening tour who actually lived in poverty. “I wonder if you remember me,” she said in an open letter to Speaker Ryan, published the day before the release of his anti-poverty plan. “I know you realize that poverty would be twice as high without the safety net, with nearly 30 percent of Americans living below the poverty line. What would our nation look like with 30 percent poverty? We can thank the safety net for the fact that we don’t know the answer to that question.”

She wrote that since giving that testimony, she and her anti-poverty co-workers had reached out to his office numerous times and got no response.

Ryan claims the plan will “reward work,” but it’s light on details about what those rewards are. It tells states to do a better job connecting unemployed people with jobs but doesn't say how, and it “encourages” aid recipients to get to work. It does acknowledge the conundrum poor people face when they find work and their benefits immediately shrink, oftentimes resulting in a lower income than they had before they were working, though Ryan doesn’t spell out how he would adjust benefits in a more “tailored” way.

That's the problem, says Melissa Boteach, vice-president of the Poverty to Prosperity program at the liberal Center for American Progress. "Progressives and conservatives can agree on the statement: 'A job is the best pathway out of poverty,'" she said, paraphrasing Ryan's report. "But the difference is that progressives are talking about investments to create jobs: raising the minimum wage; removing barriers to opportunity; fair schedules; paid sick days; affordable, quality child-care – things that are actually going to enable people to connect and stay employed in good jobs. Conservatives are saying that if we Just require people to work, magically jobs will appear and all the barriers that have prevented people from being able to hold them down will magically disappear."

Boteach says the clearest statement of Ryan's priorities is the budget he just helped pass, which cuts health care, food aid and higher education funding for low- and moderate-income people. Ryan has voted at least 10 times against raising the federal minimum wage, virtually guaranteeing that people trying to move from welfare to work still won’t be able to support a family on their wages. When he chaired the House Budget Committee, his budgets followed a similar line, deriving the lion's share of their savings from cuts to programs for the poor.

Ryan plans to tie work requirements to housing assistance in addition to food aid, noting, “Some 44 percent of work-capable households using federal rental assistance report no annual income from wages.”  

Housing is widely considered a first step toward stabilizing homeless and poor people. Before they can succeed at school or at work, the logic goes – before they can get off drugs or get on the services they need – people need to be free of the overwhelming stress of having to figure out each night where they’re going to sleep. Threatening people’s housing security is a dangerous way to “encourage” them to work.

"I fail to understand how making people homeless, hungry and uninsured will help them find a job," Boteach said.

Ryan also wants to privatize some social services, paying back private providers only if programs meet their goals.

He also wants to improve early childhood development, “making sure parents are fully informed about the choices they have for their kids’ care and education.” But he opposes paid family leave and has cut child-care subsidies for needy families, so it's unclear exactly what “choices” he is referring to.

He also wants to help families save for retirement – a laudable goal. But his plan to accomplish that involves repealing legislation aimed at reining in reckless Wall Street banking practices that precipitated the recession – a proposal that will upset many who lobbied for those measures. 

The same day that Ryan released his anti-poverty agenda, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) joined with the Center for American Progress (CAP) to unveil a radically different plan toward the same goal of reducing poverty. 

"Our plan acknowledges that poverty today is very much in the context of widening income inequality in the past four decades, where the gains for economic growth have concentrated at the very top while wages for everyone else have been flat or declining," Boteach said. "You cannot address poverty separate from the issues of the broader economy and jobs and wages."

CAP's plan includes a bump in the minimum wage to $12 an hour, a major increase in the child-care tax credit, and an opportunity for low-level non-violent offenders to wipe their slate clean to avoid future discrimination in employment and housing. It also includes changes to and an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which Ryan also supports but which is not included in his anti-poverty agenda.

In a Twitter chat under the hashtag #ExpertsOnPoverty last week, the anti-poverty organization RESULTS collected comments from people who have lived in poverty on the importance of safety net programs in their lives. “#SNAPmatters literally kept me and my brother alive on many occasions,” wrote one, adding, “Tax time was when we got our Christmas gifts. We paid off bills #EITC and #WorkingFamilyCredits gave us a fresh start.”

“Without nutrition assistance my children and I would have gone dreadfully hungry living below poverty level,” wrote another. “#Workingfamilycredits & #EITC allows us to pay back dated bills! Allows us to save!” wrote a third.

Photo: Wikimedia