Advertisements

Paul Ryan, apparently thought of as the great Republican policy wonk, released his “new” anti-poverty plan on Thursday. This plan is the result of Ryan’s quest to learn about poverty on his so-called listening tour. Ironically, during his “listening tour” Ryan did all he could to avoid listening to people who actually live in poverty.

To be fair, Ryan did figure out that expanding the earned tax credit would be a good idea. He has figured out that that poor people need more cash. He is open to prison and sentencing reform. He also figured out that just telling the poor to pray more is not exactly the wonkiest way to address poverty.

Advertisements

Other than that, Ryan’s latest plan really amounts to proposing block grants again while indulging in more of the paternalistic poverty shaming for which Ryan and others in the Republican Party are infamous.

Ryan proposes consolidating SNAP, welfare and housing-assistance programs to establish a sort of one stop shaming for assistance. The idea of simplifying access to assistance is appealing, at least until you get into the details Ryan’s proposal.

In exchange for consolidating assistance, Ryan has some ways to make sure that people seeking cash assistance are properly humiliated. They must sign a contract containing “specific and measurable benchmarks for success” with a timeline of course. Just to make certain that the signee knows that Ryan is serious there will be sanctions for breaking the contract’s terms and incentives for fulfilling them. Finally, Ryan wants poor families to work with a life coach to make sure someone keeps a watchful eye on their efforts to fulfill their contractual obligations.

This is more of the same Republican rhetoric that blames the poor for being poor and assumes that they are too lazy and stupid to dig themselves out of poverty. There is nothing in Ryan’s plan to address the fact that many people are poor because there are more job seekers than there are jobs. Moreover, there is a shortage of jobs that pay above poverty wages. Forcing people to sign something requiring them to get a job is not going to change that.

There is nothing in Ryan’s proposal to create more jobs – let alone jobs that pay a living wage. Perhaps Ryan believes that if people just realized they could choose or pray their way out of poverty, jobs that pay a living wage will create themselves.

This is about shaming people for being poor in ways that the middle class and the rich are spared. Can you imagine Ryan & Co. demanding that corporations sign a contract and get a life coach in exchange for corporate welfare? Can you imagine Ryan telling Walmart that, in exchange for getting to dodge their taxes, they must sign a contract complete with time line requiring them to pay their employees a living wage?

Moreover, as Annie Lowrey points out in her excellent take down of Ryan’s latest attempt to humiliate people for seeking assistance, Ryan also threatens to impose collective punishment if the contract signer breaks the contract.

Let’s say you’re a single mom with five kids. You break your contract. You get “sanctioned” — a term normally used for money-launderers, terrorists, and narcotics traffickers, by the way. You suffer, and you fall deeper into poverty. But more to the point, your children suffer.

The reality is that 40% of Americans will experience poverty at one point in their lives, because of circumstances – not personal failings. As Mark R. Rank pointed out in 2013,

Events like losing a job, having work hours cut back, experiencing a family split or developing a serious medical problem all have the potential to throw households into poverty.

As I mentioned earlier, Ryan used this opportunity to re-pitch block grants. Historically, block grants have resulted in cuts to safety net programs. One example is TANF block grants that have declined by 30% over the past 16 years.

Even if you accept the notion that there must be a healthy dose of humiliation for those seeking assistance, this proposal is more proof that Ryan, the great policy wonk, doesn’t know how to add up the numbers in his budgetary proposals. He claims this policy is “deficit neutral.”

When the Center for American Progress crunched the numbers, when considered with his latest budget proposal guess what? The numbers don’t add up.

Rep. Ryan claims that his new proposal to reform the safety net is “deficit neutral.” But it cannot be separated from his most recent budget proposal, in which 69 percent of his nearly $5 trillion in cuts over 10 years comes from programs helping low- and moderate-income families. Either his new recommendations will ultimately result in cuts to programs helping struggling families or he will fail to balance the budget.

In other words, while there are some ideas worth considering, this is just another one of lying Ryan’s attempts to repackage old ideas, albeit with new ways to humiliate low-income earners.

Image: NPR