Momentum builds for Clyburn poverty plan
By Mike Lillis - 09/21/16 06:00 AM EDT
Seven years in the making, Democratic South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn’s anti-poverty plan has found powerful friends — and a real shot at passage — in this year’s government spending debate. Leading Republicans have in the past supported Clyburn’s targeted spending approach, which would funnel more federal dollars to the most poverty-stricken parts of the country.
Now those same GOP leaders — who had adopted Clyburn’s formula to govern more than a dozen federal programs earlier in the year — are vowing to fight for those same provisions as part of the budget debate Congress is poised to have in December.
Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is among the leading champions of Clyburn’s concept. “Several of our House bills included these types of provisions, and they are a priority for the Chairman,” Jennifer Hing, a committee spokeswoman, said this week. “The Committee will of course push to complete all of our bills before the end of the year.”
Rogers is hardly alone. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has long touted Clyburn’s targeted funding strategy as a logical approach to poverty alleviation. As GOP leaders head into the year’s final spending fights — and as they scramble to attract minority voters ahead of November’s general elections — Ryan sees Clyburn’s plan as an effective complement to the anti-poverty measures promoted in his “Better Way” agenda.
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http://thehill.com/homenews/house/296946-momentum-builds-for-clyburn-poverty-plan
