House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, responding to the troubles in Baltimore, said that another round of welfare reform is needed to help move the poor from government dependence to a job.
“Just because we are for limited government, as Republicans, doesn’t mean that we are for no government. We’re for effective government, limited but effective government,” he said in responding to the Baltimore riots during a breakfast roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
Ryan said that the War on Poverty hasn’t worked and a shift needs to be made to helping the poor out of poverty, not keeping them there.
Rep. Paul Ryan. Bryan Dozier/The Christian Science Monitor
“We need to change our poverty fighting metrics, from measuring success based on inputs, effort, spending, programs, to outcomes, to results. Are we actually getting people out of poverty,” he said the goal should be.
A key to that would be welfare reform like the package approved under former President Bill Clinton that moved the poor to jobs.
“We need to do another round of welfare reform, not as an exercise to save money, but as an exercise to save lives and to get people from welfare to work and realize opportunity and upward mobility because there are too many people who don’t think the American idea is ever there for them again, and that’s a tragedy,” said the former Republican vice presidential candidate.
Any bid for more welfare reform is likely to run into Democratic opposition, but the likable and thoughtful Ryan has a good track record in working with Democrats on tough issues.
Rep. Paul Ryan at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast interview. Bryan Dozier/The Christian Science Monitor
“We just did 50 years in the War on Poverty, we spent trillions of dollars, and we still have 45 million people living in poverty, deep poverty is among the highest on record,” he argued. “We can’t keep measuring success by how much money are we throw at programs. We have to measure success as, ‘Is it working?’ ”
He also said that politicians and police have to engage in communities to work together on solutions to sticky issues.
“This does not have to be a Republican-Democratic thing,” he said, predicting differences.
He steered reporters to a project he has helped that features stories about Americans digging out of poverty, called OpportunityLives.com.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
