By David K. Shipler
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan
is busily issuing paper after paper on his party’s “core principles” regarding
poverty, health care, national security, the tax code, and the like. These are
meant to be serious proposals for reform, and they should be taken seriously,
for some of them pose serious threats to less fortunate Americans.
That is especially so with Ryan’s
anti-poverty plan entitled “A Better Way: Our Vision for a Confident America.” The
35-page document is heavily punitive, advocating sanctions against the poor if
they do not achieve employment. If the plan were implemented by a Republican
Congress under a Trump administration, it would further shred the safety net
that now protects numerous innocent children from hunger and homelessness.
The damage would be done in two
ways: first, by requiring heads of poor households to get jobs or lose their
food stamps and housing subsidies—in effect, adding to those essential benefits
the work requirements that currently limit cash welfare checks through
Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). In other words, if you don’t get a job,
no help getting food for your kids and keeping a roof over your family’s head.
Second, Ryan would decentralize
accountability by cutting most strings that are attached by the federal
government to state and local expenditures of federal funds. So, recipients of
grants would have pretty free rein to spend the money as they wish.
Unfortunately, not all states care much about poor people, as we’ve seen in the
Republican-led states that have rejected Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid,
even though the cost is borne almost entirely by Washington.
