"We want to get at the root causes of poverty,” Ryan said. Ryan defends anti-poverty plan

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan defended his newly released anti-poverty proposal on Sunday, saying it would upend a federal system that "perpetuates poverty."

“We don’t want to have a poverty management system that simply perpetuates poverty," the Wisconsin Republican said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We want to get at the root causes of poverty.”

The 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee released a plan last week to give states autonomy to administer their own anti-poverty programs. The proposal, called the Opportunity Grant, would consolidate 11 federal programs — including food stamps, housing assistance and other welfare programs — and provide funding for states to manage those funds on a more local level.

Ryan has long been critical of federal poverty programs, saying the War on Poverty has “failed” and that the federal government has fostered a "dependency culture."

In an interview in March, the congressman came under fire for comments in which he railed against the “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”

On Sunday, Ryan made clear that he wasn't demonizing people in poverty, but instead suggesting that federal programs were maintaining the problem due to poor incentives. “The federal government’s approach has ended up maintaining poverty, managing poverty," he said. "In many ways, it has disincentivized people from going to work.”

As he has in the past, the congressman argued that states and local communities are better equipped to design anti-poverty programs than the federal government. “We can customize a benefit to a person based on their particular needs, which actually helps them get out of poverty long term," he said.