What Paul Ryan’s budget gets wrong about the safety net

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There are a lot of things to say about Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan. I’d like to focus on one word: hammock.

As in the Wisconsin Republican’s comparison of his proposal to welfare reform enacted during the 1990s. “This budget,” Ryan proclaimed, “extends those successes . . . to ensure that America’s safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency.”

Let’s examine that hammock, and the flawed analogy to welfare reform. If you think, as House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan seems to, that the safety net is a comfy chair, consider these facts:

- Adults without children get no federal help for health coverage, even if they are living below the poverty level ($10,890 in 2011). The health-care law would expand Medicaid coverage to poor childless adults in 2014, but, of course, Ryan would undo that change.

- The average household receiving food stamps gets about $133.70 a month ($4.46 a day) for each family member, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. To be eligible for food stamps, a household’s income must be no more than 130 percent of the poverty level ($23,800 for a family of three). Except during economic downturns, childless adults generally are limited to three months of help.

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what_paul_ryans_budget_gets_wrong_on_the_safety_net/2011/04/07/AFJPvVwC_story.html

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1. Everything.

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2. this article is written by Ruth Marcus n/t