why anyone considers Paul Ryan (R-Atlas Shrugged) a serious policy person. I mean,
consider this:
Host David Gregory asked the representative to speak to comments he made in January of 2013, in which Ryan said the country struggles with "more and more able-bodied people" becoming "dependent on the government." Gregory said Ryan didn't sound like he had much "sympathy" for impoverished Americans.
"We don't want to have a poverty management system that simply perpetuates poverty," Ryan said, pitching his poverty proposal that he says will allow for a customized approach to each individual's needs.
If this sounds familiar, maybe it's because it's what we've been hearing from the right for the last fifty years -- at least.
Here's
a somewhat sketchy summary of Ryan's plan:
The centerpiece in Ryan’s new plan is what he calls the Opportunity Grant — a program that would consolidate as many as 11 separate federal initiatives into a single chunk of funding for states.
In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Ryan said that the setup would aid state governments and local organizations that should be the “front lines” in the war on poverty, instead of the federal bureaucracy.
“Success is measured by how many programs we create, how much money we spend,” Ryan said about the government’s current approach. “Not on outcomes. Not on results. How many people are we getting out of poverty? How many people are getting out of poverty and staying out of poverty?”
And here's
a summary of some of the criticisms. And don't miss
Paul Krugman's take:
What does scholarly research on antipoverty programs actually say? We have quite good evidence on the effects of food stamps and Medicaid, which draw most of Mr. Ryan’s ire — and which his budgets propose slashing drastically. Food stamps, it seems, do lead to a reduction in work and working hours, but the effect is modest. Medicaid has little, if any, effect on work effort.
Over all, here’s the verdict of one comprehensive survey: “While there are significant behavioral side effects of many programs, their aggregate impact is very small.” In short, Mr. Ryan’s poverty report, like his famous budget plan, is a con job.
As far as I can see, Ryan's proposing that all federal anti-poverty programs be lumped into one program to give block grants to the states, with, admittedly, some federal oversight. (Which, one hopes, will preclude the states using the funds to balance their own budgets while leaving their poor to starve. One hopes. Given the states' records with things like Medicare and other block grants, I'm not sanguine on that one. And of course, if they don't use the money for intended purposes what are the feds going to do? Take it back? There's still no help for the poor in that scenario.) And of course, Ryan doesn't address the fact that there are no jobs for the poor to move into -- unless they also move to Bangladesh or China.
Oh, and about the supposed ineffectiveness of the federal programs? Not so much -- in fact,
Ryan's own report demonstrates that many of them have been very effective. Maybe if he weren't such a media whore he'd have time to read what his office is putting out. And there's a possibility, though I hate to bring up the obvious, that if Republicans would actually fund these programs at necessary levels, they'd work a lot better.
Just sayin'.
(For a commentary on Ryan's plan that's even snarkier than mine, read
this at Mahablog.)
