Speaker Ryan’s Better Way on Poverty

On June 7, 2016, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) made good on his long-standing commitment to address the pernicious issue of poverty in the United States.  Speaker Ryan joined other House leaders at a drug rehabilitation facility in Southeast Washington, D.C. to unveil their “Better Way” to fight poverty and increase “opportunity and upward mobility.”

The detailed Better Way policy prescriptions on six key national issues are intended to counteract the narrative that the GOP does not possess an alternative agenda during the Obama presidency. 

During his announcement, Speaker Ryan said, “We think the way to fight poverty is to fight its symptoms.”  The report’s fundamental conclusion is similar to past CAGW Wastewatcher articles detailing that the 1964 War on Poverty has resulted in a bloated and wasteful federal government that maintains a complicated web of more than 80 poverty-related programs and has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars in a failed attempt to help low-income Americans.  After a half-century of the War on Poverty, the poverty rate went from 14.7 percent in 1966 to 14.8 percent in 2014.  President Reagan’s words ring even truer today: “The federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.”