PAUL RYAN, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, is known for his love of detailed policy. Donald Trump, his party’s presumptive nominee for president, does not share this fondness. So it was fitting that on June 7th, while Mr Trump was busy fighting—or basking in—the scandal over his latest remarks on race, Mr Ryan was launching a policy paper. The report, on poverty and welfare, was somewhat overshadowed by the Speaker using the question-and-answer session to wade into the row about Mr Trump’s pronouncements. But there is time for wonkery yet: the paper is the first of six which will form a new agenda for Republicans, dubbed “A Better Way”. The policies are supposed to be implemented if the party takes back the White House, though how much of it Mr Trump supports is anyone’s guess.

The paper has three notable themes. The first is simplification. Mr Ryan sees the welfare system as a sprawling mess. More than 80 federal welfare programmes sit atop one another, with little attention paid to their compatibility, and without government agencies much co-operating in their administration. Each programme—be it food stamps, housing subsidies, or Medicare—has its own eligibility rules. As low-earners’ incomes increase, benefits are withdrawn in a hodgepodge fashion. As a result, the marginal tax rate, including both taxes and withdrawn benefits, jumps around erratically. Sometimes it exceeds 100%, meaning workers are better-off earning less. Mr Ryan wants to consolidate the programmes. Such a simplification—and a reduction in marginal tax rates—would be welcome.

The second theme is value for money. The paper complains that not enough programmes are rigorously evaluated, and calls for the government to open up its data to researchers. It also notes that states can simply shift claimants towards federally-funded programmes (such as disability benefits) rather than helping them find work. Mr Ryan wants to fix this, perhaps by gradually reducing the share of the bill the federal government foots for any given individual, the longer they stay on the welfare-rolls.

The third—and probably the most divisive—idea is to ramp up work requirements. In 1996, welfare reform under President Bill Clinton and the Republican Speaker, Newt Gingrich, required states to ensure that sufficient numbers of their cash welfare recipients were in work, training and the like. Mr Ryan suggests expanding that to cover housing subsidies, too.

The left will see this as an attempt to unpick yet another part of the safety net. Under the 1996 reform, one way states could satisfy work requirements was by shrinking their welfare-rolls, whether or not those who lost their benefits found a job. Unsurprisingly, cash welfare became much harder to come by. In 1996, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families—as cash-welfare is called—benefitted 68 families for every 100 families in poverty, according to the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think-tank. Today, the figure is just 26.

Mr Ryan also bemoans the numbers of adults without dependents who claim food stamps (or, more formally, “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance”) without working or preparing to work. This is a red herring. The 1996 reforms already bar able-bodied adults without children from receiving food stamps while unemployed for more than three months in any three-year period. True, this rule was mostly suspended during the recession. But work requirements are now back in force in more than 40 states. There is little more Republicans could do on this front.

One part of the plan will please Democrats: Mr Ryan wants to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, a wage top-up for low earners (though he also complains about high rate of erroneous payments, which reached 27% in 2014). That is unlikely to be enough to placate the left, though: Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, dismissed the paper as “an agenda for creating poverty”. Don’t expect another bipartisan welfare deal. Despite the two men’s differences, Mr Ryan must pin all his hopes on Mr Trump.