THE HILL – House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Monday issued a 204-page critique of federal anti-poverty programs that concludes many of them are redundant, counterproductive and in need of reform.
“Federal programs are not only failing to address the problem. They are also in some significant respects making it worse,” the report states.
The report finds the federal poverty rate is at 15 percent, a drop of only 2.5 percentage points since President Lyndon Johnson launched a “War on Poverty” 50 years ago. The poverty rate has remained high despite the government spending $799 billion on 92 programs to combat poverty in fiscal 2012, including $200 billion in cash aid and $300 billion on healthcare.
On food stamps, the report says the $78 billion per year program “reduces poverty — but not by much.” It argues that food stamps discourage work and only lowered poverty from 17.6 percent to 16.1 percent in fiscal 2012.
Read more at The Hill.
