Does Paul Ryan Really Want To Help Working Families And The Unemployed?

Paul Ryan's voting record in Congress-- going back to 1999 when he was a 20-something with the consciousness, though not the wisdom, of an angry 80 year old-- shows pretty conclusively he has never cared a whit about working class families. He has consistently voted against unemployment insurance for the men and women tossed out of work when conservative economic agendas have passed and wrecked the economy. So has he changed his mind? I wouldn't bet on it. Last week most Republicans and a gaggle of slimy New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party voted for a tax bill that values the children of wealthy parents far more than the value of middle class and low income households' children. Paul Ryan was not one of the mainstream Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats opposing that grotesquely unfair tax legislation. Paul Ryan is still the chair of the House Budget Committee, although there are rumors he will be stepping down to concentrate on his goat-milking run for the GOP presidential nomination.

Ryan has been trying to paint himself as some kind of new face of "compassionate conservatism" who can help the poor folks. Ask the poor folks how that "compassionate conservatism" bullshit worked out for them last time, when Bush used it to help him win the presidency and then proceeded to destroy the economy by lowering taxes on the wealthiest families-- a kind of reverse Robin Hood effect. Is Ryan as bad as Bush? Worse… much worse. The non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzed Ryan's proposal and found that it would actually increase poverty. Robert Greenstein explains that the centerpiece of "Ryan's new poverty plan would consolidate 11 safety-net and related programs-- from food stamps to housing vouchers, child care, and the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)-- into a single block grant to states"-- Ryan's flashy new “Opportunity Grant” that Greenstein asserts "would likely increase poverty and hardship, and is therefore ill-advised." Here's why:

• While Chairman Ryan describes the proposal as maintaining the same overall funding as the current system for each participating state, that would be a practical impossibility. His proposal would convert the nation’s basic food assistance safety net-- the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps-- from an entitlement that responds automatically to increased need into part of a sweeping block grant that gives each state fixed funding for the year and, thus, cannot respond in the same way. This would be a particularly serious problem when need rises, such as in recessions.

• All ten programs other than SNAP that would merge into the block grant serve only small percentages of those eligible, and federal funding for them (other than low-income rental assistance programs) is comparatively modest. As my colleague Donna Pavetti points out, this means that if some people receive more services under the proposal, as Chairman Ryan envisions, those services will likely be paid for by cutting assistance that helps poor families put food on the table or a roof over their head. Some of the service programs to which funds would likely be shifted have higher administrative costs than programs like SNAP and rental vouchers, so less would remain for basic assistance to needy families. And, in some cases, more powerful state and local political forces may seek to corral more of the funding. For example, many state and local officials likely would try to shift part of the former SNAP benefit dollars to CDBG-type “development” proposals that politically powerful local developers (who often make large campaign contributions) often favor.

• While Chairman Ryan says he’s driven by evidence and research, his plan would jeopardize basic nutrition assistance for poor children, which research has shown is highly effective not only in reducing child malnutrition, but also in improving children’s long-term prospects. A path-breaking recent study examined what occurred after food stamps gradually expanded nationwide in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It found that poor children with access to food stamps in early childhood (and whose mothers had access during pregnancy) had an 18-percentage-point higher high school graduation rate-- and were less likely as adults to have stunted growth or heart disease or to be obese-- than comparable children who lacked access to food stamps because their counties hadn’t yet implemented the program. By eliminating poor families’ entitlement to SNAP and placing funds for basic food assistance at risk of being diverted, the Ryan plan would jeopardize these crucial gains.

• Total funding to assist low-income families-- from federal, state, and local levels combined-- likely would decline, because the block grant would afford state and local officials tantalizing opportunities to use some block grant funds to replace state and local funds now going for similar services. Chairman Ryan says that the federal block grant funds would have to be used for the poor. But that wouldn’t prevent states and localities from substituting some of these funds for existing state and local funds that they now use for some of the same purposes. That’s what happened under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, even though Congress tried to forestall that through a maintenance-of-effort requirement and non-supplantation provisions. With broad block grants of this nature, some substitution by state and local governments is almost impossible to prevent.

• History clearly shows that when policymakers combine a number of programs into a block grant, federal funding typically declines over time, often dramatically. That has occurred in most broad-based block grants of recent decades. When a broad array of programs are merged into a block grant, policymakers find it virtually impossible to identify a specific level of needed federal funding-- or the likely human impact of program cuts. As a result, the broad block grant often becomes easy to squeeze in the competition for federal budget dollars.

Basically, all the problems Greenstein cites, are exactly what Paul Ryan-- devout Ayn Rand disciple-- is trying to accomplish, not accidental miscalculations. Watch the whole video of Ryan molesting the goat at the Racine County fair Sunday-- just the way he plans on molesting working class families with his new "Opportunity Grants."