This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The House of Representatives budget committee chairman, Paul Ryan, on Sunday accused the Obama administration of “perpetuating poverty” with a benefits programme that does not help the poor find a way to a better life.



Expanding on the anti-poverty programme he proposed this week, the Wisconsin Republican said the way benefits are currently administered was “counterproductive” and told NBC’s Meet the Press that people affected by poverty needed individual solutions at a local level.

“Poverty is a complicated problem and it needs to be customised,” he said.

Challenged to respond to situations in which Republican governors of impoverished states have refused to expand Medicaid healthcare assistance for those on low incomes, under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Ryan denied that such examples would make people sceptical of his plan to devolve benefits administration to the states.

“We basically have a poverty management system from the federal government, a safety net programme that is not getting people out of poverty,” he said.

Earlier this week, Ryan unveiled a proposal to transfer the allocation of benefits to state level. He wants to consolidate 11 anti-poverty benefits now run by the federal government, ranging from food stamps to public housing assistance and childcare aid, into one anti-poverty programme, administered locally.

“We can customise a benefit to a person based on their needs which helps them get out of poverty in the long term,” he said. “We currently spend $800bn a year on 92 different programmes and what you have is the highest poverty rates of a generation.”

Ryan, who was the GOP's vice-presidential candidate alongside Mitt Romney in 2012, wants trained state benefits officers to work with families “to try to give them a path up”. He would increase flexibility and accountability in the system in order to “focus on outcomes”, rather than the amount of money being handed out.

The current federal anti-poverty benefits system is no more than a “poverty management system that perpetuates poverty”, he said.

“We need to listen to the people on the ground who are fighting poverty person to person and give them more flexibility and accountability,” he said.

Ryan said the current welfare system “disincentivised” people from getting a job.

“Able-bodied people should go to work and we should have a system that helps them do that so they can realise their potential,” he said, adding that taxpayers were not getting “the results they deserve”.