Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week that he hopes his endorsement of Republican Donald Trump - and the unveiling of a wide-ranging conservative agenda - will be a turning point in the 2016 race.(Photo: Andy Manis, for Milwaukee Journa)
WASHINGTON – Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday will<span style="color: Red;">*</span>start detailing policy prescriptions that are part of a positive Republican vision that he says will show Americans what the party is for, rather than focusing on what it’s against.
At an event in Washington Tuesday, he is expected to unveil recommendations drawn up by a task force of House Republicans to combat poverty and aid upward mobility.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>According to a task force report, they include:
• Instituting work requirements for welfare recipients and for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, who are able to work;
• Consolidating or streamlining 18 federal food-assistance programs and myriad housing programs, such as the Rural Housing Service rental assistance program and HUD’s Housing Choice voucher program;
• Streamlining federal funding for at-risk youths and for 45 separate early childhood programs and giving states and local governments more flexibility to address their residents’ needs;
•<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Rolling back federal requirements and regulations for technical education programs and for colleges and universities, which one study commissioned by Vanderbilt University last year estimated cost schools $27 billion annually. The plan also recommends consolidating the nine federal-aid programs for higher education into three.
•<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Making it easier for businesses to team up and offer joint 401k plans.
Overall, federal funding of social programs should be more focused on results, the task force concluded, and measuring them by whether they are making a difference in people’s lives — are they getting people back to work, for instance, or reducing poverty.
“Common sense says the federal government should fund only programs that have a track record of success,” the report says. “Yet the federal government frequently pays for well-intentioned programs and services that have no evidence of effectiveness — and in many cases, even when the program is proven not to work at all.”
The report cites statistics that show the poverty rate is roughly 15%, the same as it was in 1965, before many of the programs started. Those numbers have been criticized before as misleading. The White House issued a report in 2012 suggesting it went from 26% in 1967 to 16% in 2012.
In any case, the GOP task force says federal money should be spent on programs that “actually achieve results” and not those just “intended to help.” And it says more data should be shared between agencies to help make those evaluations, and also to reduce improper payments from social programs, the report says.
The federal government in fiscal 2015 wrongly paid out $10 billion for unemployment benefits, food stamps, rental assistance and school breakfast and lunch programs. Those payments accounted for between 4% and 23% of all payments made under those programs, according to federal figures.
“With such high error rates in many of our nation’s safety net programs, it is essential that agencies use all available tools to reduce improper payments and ensure benefits are going directly to those most in need,” the report concludes.
Democrats were blasting the report before it was even released on Monday. In a memo to reporters, Democratic Whip<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Steny Hoyer of Maryland<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., <span style="color: Red;">*</span>who chairs the whip’s task force on poverty and inequality, said “reports already indicate this ‘new’ agenda will be just more of the same tired and failed policies that House Republicans have put forward in the past.”
They asserted Ryan’s “intent to gut the safety net remains clear” and that Ryan has “simply found a better way for House Republicans to describe their long-standing policy priorities, which we know won’t work.”
At the White House, before Ryan’s policies were circulated, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said there could be some areas of agreement on the policies, such as on expanding eligibility for the earned income tax credit. But he said he was “bemused by this process.”
“He’s the Speaker of the House.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>He doesn’t just have to make policy proposals, he runs the House of Representatives,” Earnest said. “Put it in a bill.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Put it on the floor.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Run it through a committee. Have<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a debate.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>That’s the whole reason you presumably ran for the job in the first place.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Let’s have that debate.”
Ryan has said the agenda is meant to be a starting point for legislation<span style="color: Red;">*</span>under a Republican president in 2017.
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed