House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday will lift the curtain on the Republicans’ ambitious, six-part plan to show November voters a detailed agenda, one that he hopes can unite the party and create some guidelines for its unpredictable presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.
“The issues included represent the areas of common ground the speaker has with Donald Trump and he is confident the plans House Republicans would pass in 2017 would be signed into law with a Trump White House,” an House GOP aide said.
After four months of work by a half dozen House committees, Ryan will roll out the first part of the plan on Tuesday, which tackles poverty and ineffective welfare programs.
Later in the week, the GOP will introduce their foreign policy plank. Immigration and trade, which divide the GOP, are not among the policy plans.
Ryan will reveal the welfare plan at a residential treatment program in Anacostia, which includes some of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Ryan has long talked about reforming welfare programs in a way that can lift more people out of poverty, and said he believes the current system is ineffective and traps the poor.
The plan, “Poverty, Opportunity and Upward Mobility,” would add a requirement that able adults work or “prepare for work” in exchange for receiving welfare benefits. The plan would also engage in work training programs the non-custodial parents who owe child support to mothers who are receiving welfare benefits.
The 35-page report uses statistics, graphs and charts to underscore the GOP belief that current welfare policy is expensive and ineffective, and is leading to bigger welfare rolls without doing anything to encourage people to get back into the work force.
In order to help curb the “increasing number” of able-bodied adults without children who are receiving food stamps, the proposal would “insist on work” for those adults in exchange for benefits, and seek to eliminate policies that discourage people from job training or work.
Work requirements would extend to those who receive housing help.
The plan’s authors say the Department of Housing and Urban Development spends $45 billion annually on 85 different programs, including assistance with rent and utilities.
The HUD rental assistance program, Republicans say, “lack requirements to encourage greater individual self-sufficiency,” which raises costs and leads to waiting lists for help.
Able bodied adults “should be expected to work or prepare for work by meeting with … case workers who collaborate with them to develop self-sufficiency plans,” and help them with childcare and transportation, the plan states.
It also calls for incentives for employers and non-profits aimed at helping people escape from welfare.
The GOP asserts that social policy experts believe welfare programs are not effective at lifting people off dependency, yet are very costly and often overlap. In response, the plan would utilize the Evidence-Based Policy Commission, signed into law in March, to “bring together leading researchers, program administrators, and experts,” to review the programs.
