Before becoming speaker of the House, Paul Ryan set out to show that he cared about poor Americans. He traveled to low-income neighborhoods to talk to struggling families, and he proposed big ideas like merging separate federal programs to create large “opportunity grants” so states could try new ways to help the poor without the micromanagement of federal bureaucracies. He even threw his support behind an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit paid to low-wage workers through the tax system.
Then Ryan became speaker and realized that his party needed not a “Ryan anti-poverty plan” but a “Republican anti-poverty plan.” His goal now became twofold: finding serious proposals that would help low-income Americans move up, and encouraging the Republican House conference to embrace the effort and make it their own.
On Tuesday, the House Republicans delivered on both counts when the Poverty, Opportunity and Upward Mobility Task Force, which is made up of six Republican committee chairmen, released their report. The determination to focus on poverty was clear at the Republican conference retreat this winter, where Ryan’s staff was encouraged by the members to abandon the traditional format of having outside experts selected by the leadership lecture at members. Instead, the entire conference engaged in a wide-ranging discussion where member after member described the challenges they were seeing in their districts and offered their own ideas for helping poor Americans.
Those ideas were refined over the intervening months, informed by listening sessions and hearings, and resulted in a promising agenda. Task Force members recognize that there is a federal role in helping the poor. The report is comprehensive and addresses an array of challenges ranging from early childhood development to needed services for those with disabilities. The members argue that our current system is leaving too many Americans stuck at the bottom, and that better coordination of multiple federal efforts and greater focus on outcomes can lead to an increase in upward mobility.
The report does not abandon old truths and successful approaches, and properly focuses on work as the key to escaping poverty. Safety net programs should expect work or work preparation from capable adults. Unemployment Insurance should be reformed to help those who lose their jobs get back to work quickly before their skills erode. And the Child Support Enforcement program ought to help the absent parent gain the skills needed to find employment and contribute to raising the child while remaining true to its core objective of enforcing the payment of child support. The Task Force also praises government-funded work-support programs, like the Earned Income Tax Credit or food stamp benefits, that make low wages go further and “smooth the glide path from welfare to work.”
The Task Force report also acknowledges that many Americans face a mismatch between their skills and what employers demand due to an educational system that is not up to the task of preparing children for our modern economy. The Republicans recommend more federally-funded research into which types of pre-K programs produce long-lasting gains for children. They advocate for expanded school choice, but with weighted, per-pupil funding that incentivizes schools to better serve low-income students. Like many from both sides of the aisle, Task Force members emphasize vocational education that is aligned with the state of the local job market and provides sought-after skills.
Finally, throughout the document there is a clear emphasis on carefully evaluating the evidence on all programs, phasing out programs that don’t show success, and expanding efforts that evidence shows deliver results. The Task Force report recommends the use of administrative data to enable rigorous evaluations of programs, and private financing to direct needed dollars to new initiatives that improve outcomes.
Despite pre-emptive attacks from Democrats — Rep. Sandy Levin of Michigan called the plan “harmful” a week before it was even released — this report shows a desire to make targeted improvements to government’s efforts rather than take on more risky approaches. There is no block grant of the food stamp program, no large wage subsidy proposal, certainly nothing as radical and potentially destructive to entry-level employment as a mandated $15 minimum wage. Instead, the House Republicans have put forth serious ideas to address the skill deficiencies that begin in early childhood and are not addressed by either the K-12 or higher education systems; they propose reforming assistance programs to push recipients toward employment and support them when they get a job; and they embrace evidence-based policymaking.
The report is not perfect. There could have been more discussion about promoting better nutrition in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps), for example. But House Republicans are engaged in finding ways to apply conservative principles to the problems facing low-income Americans.
It would be politics as usual for Democrats to dismiss this offering out of hand, and some surely will, but the country would be better served if leading Democrats engaged seriously and tried to find a few important reforms that both sides can agree on. Americans stuck at the bottom have grown very tired of waiting for the stalemate to break.
