Speaker Ryan's Contempt for Working Families Forum
This weekend, in his spirited attempt to conceal the GOP's contempt for working people, Speaker Ryan walked back those callous comments. Unfortunately, that's where the GOP makeover ended: at his so-called "poverty forum," Speaker Ryan only doubled down on the House GOP agenda that empowers billionaires and special interests on the backs of working families.
Chad Stone, US News & World Report: What the GOP Won't Tell You About Poverty
Republicans like Paul Ryan won't acknowledge that government safety-net programs have significantly reduced poverty.…We still have a poverty problem in America, but no one should pretend that our anti-poverty programs haven't made a significant difference in reducing it.
Looking at likely GOP solutions, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities President Robert Greenstein argues that the signature proposal of Speaker Ryan – merging numerous safety-net programs into a single "Opportunity Grant" to states – could actually increase poverty, not reduce it. Currently, SNAP is an entitlement program that responds automatically to increases in need, because anyone meeting the eligibility requirements can get SNAP benefits. Ryan's Opportunity Grant would fold SNAP and other programs into a huge block grant that would give each state a fixed pool of money at the start of the year that would not automatically increase in the event of an economic downturn…
As Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan offered budget plans that cut taxes and got much of their budget savings by cutting spending for low-income programs. That's no way to address poverty.
One of the most destructive ideas in poverty policy is what supporters, such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan…call "opportunity grants" and what the rest of us all block grants.The idea is to take a set of programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), housing vouchers, child care, and more, and turn them into a consolidated block grant, which means providing states with a fixed amount of funding to run the programs… The main reason this idea is so destructive is that it undermines the essence of the safety net, or its countercyclical function…
When hit with such evidence about the importance of SNAP's countercyclical function, Ryan (R) argues that policymakers could come up with a formula to adjust the block grants to go up in recessions. But besides being administratively challenging — suppose, if he's talking about a discretionary formula, Congress doesn't want to go there — this makes zero sense: "Here's a neat idea! Let's break SNAP and then fix it again so it works the way it does now."
…Billed as an opportunity for conservatives to outline their major plans on tackling poverty, the forum comes after months of heightened rhetoric on poverty and inequality—including a poverty tour by then–Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. These events are part of a concerted effort by conservative lawmakers and the media to paint the War on Poverty as a failure, even though the safety net reduced the poverty rate by more than half and lifted 48 million people above the poverty line in 2012.Unfortunately, this newfound concern for poverty is at odds with a conservative policy agenda that would exacerbate inequality, hardship, and wage stagnation.
Under his "Opportunity Grant" proposal, Ryan has proposed converting a number of programs to state block grants, a decision that nonpartisan analysis suggests would reduce families' ability to access key programs such as nutrition and housing assistance. In crafting this idea, Ryan and other conservatives often point to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program as a model—even though it does very little to mitigate poverty and hardship and is unresponsive to recessions.
Furthermore, in their most recent congressional budgets, Republicans obtained two-thirds of their cuts from programs helping low- and moderate-income families, while channeling additional resources towards tax cuts for the wealthy.
Robert Greenstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
… The fiscal year 2016 congressional budget resolution, which the Republican-run House and Senate both passed on party-line votes last year (and which is similar to the budgets that Paul Ryan fashioned as House Budget Committee chairman) would secure nearly two-thirds of its budget cuts — more than $3 trillion in cuts over ten years — from programs for low- and modest-income people…… Speaker Ryan, said that safety net programs today create a "poverty trap" that discourages people from working and makes them worse off if they do, leading them to work far less than they would otherwise. Their statements were at odds with the research… Speaker Ryan talked about low-income people who receive safety net benefits and lose 80 cents in higher taxes and lower benefits of each additional dollar they earn… But in November, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a detailed study of this issue, finding that, while that can occur in some cases, they are unusual.
… Also noteworthy, no speaker acknowledged that the Affordable Care Act reduces work disincentives among the poor in states that have adopted the ACA's Medicaid expansion…
Proposals from today to replace SNAP with a block grant — under which states would get a fixed amount of money for the year, irrespective of the state of the economy — would pose great risk of undoing this progress. They fly in the face of the conclusion of the Republican lawmaker who devoted more time to food stamp reform than any other Republican policymaker of the past half century — former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. He called the Food Stamp Program the greatest advance in American social policy since Social Security.
After years as the primary architect of Republicans' campaign to empower billionaires and special interests at the expense of working people, Speaker Ryan should know that his about-face on poverty won't fool anyone.