Paul Ryan turns the GOP presidential race toward a forgotten issue: Poverty

[applegrove]

Paul Ryan turns the GOP presidential race toward a forgotten issue: Poverty

By Mike DeBonis at the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/09/paul-ryan-turns-the-gop-presidential-race-toward-a-forgotten-issue-poverty/

"SNIP..............


COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican presidential candidates on Saturday turned their attention away from border walls and terrorist threats and birth certificates, if only for a day, to focus on a topic that is dear to the hearts of some leading conservative thinkers but has remained far from the center of the GOP race: poverty in America.

It created a spectacle that seemed far removed from the tumult of the campaign at large: A low-octane discussion of conservative policy that was short on candidate sniping and red-meat applause lines and long on mentions of block grants, school vouchers and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

That was the intent of the event’s sponsors, the Jack Kemp Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, and its leading moderator, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who has promised to use his office to make the 2016 election into a battle of ideas rather than personalities. The Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity, as the event was billed, was focused on issues near to Ryan’s wonky heart and that of his mentor, the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.).

“We’ve been fighting a war on poverty for over 50 years now, and I don’t think you conclude anything other than this war is a stalemate,” Ryan told a packed room at the convention center here at the outset of the forum. “We’ve treated poverty like they’re potholes that need to be filled up and then we move on. … We now have a safety net that is designed to catch people falling into poverty when what we really need is a safety net that is designed to help get people out of poverty.”

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“Our safety net in America today does not cure poverty,” Rubio said. “It treats the pain of poverty, the symptoms of poverty, but it does not cure it. The only cure for poverty is a good-paying job.”

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[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

1. Jack Kemp didn't give a shit about poverty

"You'll get yours after I get mine" was his motto.

[applegrove]

2. That is how Neocons won in Ontario in 1995. They said they'd start workfare programs and many

who were poor thought they would be promised a real job. "Mike Harris is going to get me a job" they said. Watch out for that. Because the poor in Ontario voted for Harris and he repaid them by immediately cutting shelter allowance in welfare which meant thousands had to break their leases and bunk up in shared accommodation within a few months of him getting elected.

[TheFarseer]

3. I agree with that completely.

But I don't see how tax cuts for the rich will help. If they had an actual plan I would listen skeptically.