"Paul Ryan Focusing More on Hurting the Poor"

[applegrove]

Paul Ryan Focusing More on Hurting the Poor

By Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/paul-ryan-focusing-more-on-hurting-the-poor.html

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


Just last week, the House provided another example of Ryan’s anti-poverty principles in action. It enacted a large cut in food stamps, as Ryan has been calling for. Then, concluding this hadn’t gone far enough, it added a provision allowing states to cut off beneficiaries who didn’t have a job. As Robert Greenstein explained, this was completely unlike the welfare provisions designed to encourage people to get jobs:

Work requirements in low-income programs require unemployed people to look for jobs, to accept any job offer, to participate in workforce or training programs if there is a slot available in a program, and the like. If the individuals fail to comply with the requirements, they can be sanctioned by having their benefits cut or terminated. The SNAP program also disqualifies people who quit a job.

This is not what the Southerland amendment would do. It would allow states to end benefits for most adults who receive or apply for SNAP — including parents with young children and many people with disabilities — if they are not working or participating in a work or training program for at least 20 hours a week. The amendment provides no jobs and no funds for work or training programs, and it does not require states to make any work opportunities available. People who want to work and are looking for a job but haven’t found one could be cut off.

A conventional analysis would call this approach cruel, bordering on sociopathic. It’s one thing to tailor policy to encourage people to work. It’s another to create a new punishment for people who can’t find jobs. And given the baseline reality of mass unemployment for low-skilled workers, and a bill that proposes nothing to create more jobs or even job training, the Southerland amendment would do nothing but punish the poor. Ryan voted for it, naturally.


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[MrScorpio]

1. Wingers are both mean AND evil. nt

[KT2000]

2. the party of hate

they are sadists.