Paul Ryan's War on (people in) Poverty.

Paul Ryan’s continued his torturous attack on the poor, with plans that are once again intentionally short on details. For Ryan, people are worthless when they’re not working. JS

“Ryan has said the agenda is meant to be a starting point for legislation under a Republican president in 2017.”

The “devil” is always in the details, and that’s why Ryan never gets to the details.

You'd think with improving jobs numbers and lower unemployment rates, the Republican myth that people are lazy freeloaders would finally be toast. Nope.

Ryan’s plan isn't a small government solution either, adding more bureaucracy; Ryan envisions a glorious time when no one can access the safety nets.

   

Bureaucratic federal requirements would be the first barrier:

Instituting work requirements for welfare recipients and for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, who are able to work.

Which will come with a maze of traps and hoops to maneuver through, you know, those “government regulations” Republicans complain so much about.

Ryan then wants to grade these programs, ignoring how the Great Recessions negated decades of business and job creation:

"Common sense says the federal government should fund only programs that have a track record of success. Yet the federal government frequently pays for well-intentioned programs and services that have no evidence of effectiveness — and in many cases, even when the program is proven not to work at all."

And forget about the Wall Street collapse and housing debacle that destroyed millions of middle class families, plunging them into poverty: 

The poverty rate is roughly 15%, the same as it was in 1965, before many of the programs started. Those numbers have been criticized before as misleading. The White House issued a report in 2012 suggesting it went from 26% in 1967 to 16% in 2012.

Get that twist in messaging; the White House’s report didn’t actually “suggest” anything, it reported how the poverty rate went from 26% to 16%.

And finally, Ryan’s 2^nd tiered attack includes a state wall to block access to our safety nets; He wants to let states imposed big government hoops and restrictions via a no-strings attached block grant. This trick is something that should be getting a lot more attention, because it not only keeps people out of these life-saving programs, it also allows states to spend the cash they save:

“…giving states and local governments more flexibility to address their residents' needs.”

Republican hate entitled Homeless People so much....

Great commentary about the homeless...

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Ryan's War with Poverty a Bureaucratic Nightmare!

Poor Paul Ryan, he can’t get any breaks. Take the “liberal media,” which is throwing out headlines like “Critics bash Ryan’s new plan.” Aw, what’s a guy like Ryan to do?

The thing is, it’s another horribly thought out plan that even some liberal pundits were sucked into praising as a first step.  No, it’s an outrageous plan. For instance, here's my list of problems:

1. It privatizes social safety nets.

2. Creates a maze of private “case managers” incentivized to get “results.” Those results? Well, I doubt the government will tolerate increased spending if you catch my drift.

3. Big government oversight will hire and fire case managers or their organizations based on “results,” the above mentioned expectation to save money.

4. Massive amounts of personal information will be in the hands of case managers or organizations with lax security measures, not to mention the threat of a government data base tracking your every move.

5. Absolutely no mention of an economic policy that needs adjusting. Solve the problems that results in poverty in the first place.

This is the kind of stuff the right wing, tea party and GOP have been railing against for decades. This is an acrobatic flip flop the likes of which no one has ever seen before. Are conservatives sleeping?

Here's Greta's interview with Rep. Paul Ryan on his plan to change the ‘status quo.’ Greta is stumped by Ryan's increase of administrative bureaucracy. ON THE RECORD:



The media chimed in, amazed by Ryan's inability to acknowledge his plans nightmarish amount of red tape: 

Salon: Ryan’s plan still rests on a rather fundamental misconception of the poor: that those who suffer under the capitalist order have no one to blame but themselves … the idea that poor people, if they want to use government programs, should sign a “contract” that would outline various steps and benchmarks they’d be responsible for — or else suffer the consequences of undefined “sanctions” … a policy that quite literally would have government agents micromanaging poor people’s lives.

Ryan assumes poverty in America cannot be adequately addressed by doing seemingly obvious things like giving people money or creating well-paying jobs that tackle vital public needs, but that it instead requires the poor to learn from a government-provided surrogate parent how to wrest themselves free from that dreaded “tailspin of culture” Ryan’s previously warned us about. Reihan Salam, a longtime Ryan cheerleader agrees that Ryan’s plan is paternalistic, but considers that one of its virtues.

There's more:

630wpro: Ryan’s support for local service providers is supposed to encourage the poor to develop short, medium, and long-term plans with help from the providers, using contracts, timelines and rewards for meeting different “benchmarks of success.” 

More still:

Financial Times: Traditional conservative Republican ideas joined with what can only be described as a “big government” proposal to closely monitor the lives of the poor as they try to progress up the socioeconomic ladder … a program that runs headlong into traditional Republican rhetoric about getting the government out of the details of people’s lives. Ryan proposes to have recipients of social safety net services sit down with a third party case manager hired by the government to provide social services and to construct a “life plan” … he envisions these contracts, and individuals’ relationships with the case manager lasting for years and monitoring their parenting skills, substance abuse, finances, living situation, and relationships with friends and family members. 

The likely size of the bureaucracy– a network of case managers for every individual (or even every family) on public assistance would likely require tens of thousands of new government employees (or contractors) and not to mention facilities, information technology equipment, and the other essentials of any modern organization. 

Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, disagreed with Ryan’s diagnosis of the problems facing the poor in the first place. “The main problem faced by the American poor is not that there’s something fundamentally wrong with the safety net.  It’s that they lack the employment and earnings opportunities necessary to work their way out of poverty,” he wrote. 

What's next for GOP? Right to shoot the poor who pose threat...to Wealthy Elite?

Republicans couldn't be more obvious this time:

The House of Representatives voted to change a tax credit in a way that would add $115 billion to the deficit and hurt poorer parents while aiding the well-to-do.

Not surprising is it? The GOP desensitizing scheme continues. Huffington Post:

The House decided to make permanent the child tax credit and expand it to families earning up to $205,000 a year. The credit, which is worth up to $1,000 for each child in a family, would also be indexed to rise with inflation, as would the eligibility thresholds.

The same week Paul Ryan took another shot at cutting aid to the poor with the Orwellian "Opportunity Act," his fellow pirates introduced the jaw dropping "Child Tax Credit Improvement Act" that does away with the tax credit for poor children and their families:

But the new measure fails to extend the part of the credit that was passed in 2009 to help impoverished families and that currently allows parents with annual earnings as low as $3,000 to claim some of the break. That element expires in 2017. Without it, a family would have to earn at least $15,000 to qualify for the credit.

An example worth noting:

According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that means a mom working full time at a minimum wage job would receive no help from the credit -- because she would be earning only $14,500. Indeed, that mom would lose $1,725 under the new bill, while a family of four earning $150,000 would gain $2,200, according to the center's analysis. About 12 million people, including 6 million children, would be pushed further into poverty if the measure became law.

I don't even know how to describe the following. Here’s the down-the-rabbit-hole argument put forth by the GOP:

Republicans argued that Democrats were raising a phony issue in pointing to the failure to extend the lower-income part of the credit. They said there was plenty of time to consider that later.

Plenty of time? How about right now?

The bill also includes a provision that would bar … immigrants … somewhere around 80 percent of the children of undocumented immigrants are believed to be U.S. citizens … some 5 million children, about 4 million of whom are citizens, would be cut off from the credit's aid.

 And why not take a few war veterans down with them?

"Its net effect is to push 12 million people, including 6 million children, right into poverty or deeper into it," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas). "That includes 400,000 veterans and armed forces families who would lose all or part of their child tax credit."

Debt, what debt?

The measure would add $115 billion to the deficit over 10 years because the House did not find any way to offset the lost revenue. So far during this session of Congress, the House has passed permanent tax cuts that would add some $721 billion to the deficit over the next decade.

Paul Ryan has always focused on Poverty? Media Keeps Myth Alive.

Let me get this right; solving the problem of poverty, along with long term unemployment, has been on Rep. Paul Ryan’s radar for a long time? It’s almost as if the press, in this case AP, is oblivious to his actual plan to get rid of these nagging problems and safety net programs. They also know of his ideological hero, Ayn Rand I hope.

Republicans like Ryan simply want to cut the poor and unemployed loose, having them disappear into society, knowing that there aren't enough newspapers to report all the devastating stories from disenfranchised Americans.

The case of the long term unemployed provided the first test for Republicans last December. They now know the unemployed, who continue to lose benefits month after month, are no longer part of the media focus. The GOP has "disappeared them"…problem solved.

But it’s even worse when an outlet like AP makes it seem like Ryan's “signature issue…(that) dates back to his time…working for former vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp” has anything to do with really helping them make a living wage or expand the jobs market. His be proud don’t eat strategy is somehow a plan?

AP: Rep. Paul Ryan is making poverty a signature issue … The Wisconsin congressman had hoped his work on poverty could be a positive: His interest in the issue dates back to his time as a speechwriter working for former vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp. He has spent much of his time since returning to Congress focused on the issue, touring poor precincts, giving speeches and producing a detailed, 205-page report on poverty, while indicating that he may introduce legislation to deal with the issue.

Ryan hopes the poor will disappear under the flood of cheerful stories about the bullish investor market and rosy corporate profits reports.

The media has already started writing stories about how the long term unemployed are probably here to stay, so we should get used to that simple fact of life.

Ryan’s comment below cements the idea that “government” and “the people” are two separate entities, and that we can’t rely on our elected lawmakers to solve the problem:

"This enforces the idea that this is government's responsibility, and you don't need to do anything about it. That's not true."

I thought that was the reason we had government, or am I missing something?

Ryan Helps the Poor Myth Builds: The AP article ended on this bizarre defensive note about our misunderstood Paul Ryan and his plans to cut the safety nets:

Mary Berry, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who served as the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 2004 (said), "Democrats will jump all over them in the messaging game, no matter what they say, and they won't be given the benefit of the doubt — that's politics."

But there are no doubts, except for those created by the media.