House Budget Committee to Hold Hearing on Poverty.

[elleng]

Is the federal government responsible for lifting millions of Americans out of poverty or trapping them in it?

That question has become a political Rorschach test this year, the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty. On Wednesday, Representative Paul D. Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, is holding a third hearing on the government and the poor, featuring testimony from the “front lines.”

In recent months, Mr. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, has loudly argued that the government has failed in its effort to end deprivation and ensure mobility.

“Today, the poverty rate is stuck at 15 percent — the highest in a generation,” a House Republican report on the war on poverty argued. “The trends are not encouraging. Federal programs are not only failing to address the problem. They are also in some significant respects making it worse.”

With the federal government spending about $800 billion on 92 programs to combat poverty in the 2012 fiscal year, Mr. Ryan has been critical of redundancy. The spending includes, according to a House Republican tally, 15 programs related to food aid and 20 related to education and job training.

“The very disarray among all these federal programs has created what’s known as the poverty trap,” the report said. “Poor families face very high implicit marginal tax rates. The federal government effectively discourages them from making more money.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/business/house-committee-looks-at-war-on-poverty.html?hp

[MissMillie]

1. the House GOP can hold as many hearings as it wants on this topic

and I'm sure they'll hold quite a few.

But they'll never do anything about poverty.

They'll try cut a poor person's income tax from $2000/year to $1840/year and think that's what's going to get a poor person out of poverty.

They're clueless.

The hearings are just to make them appear to care about poverty.

[jwirr]

2. STuck at 15%. I have posted before what I have seen happen throughout the lives of my children.

When they were born we needed more ...... Then they reached kindergarten and we needed more schools .... Then they reached junior high and we built more middle schools and hired more teachers. Then more high schools and more teachers .... Then came college and we again built and hired more teachers ..... Then came the need for more jobs .... and then more joblessness .... and with the outsourcing of the good jobs and retirement comes more poverty.

The real problem with the 15% is that we are not doing anything about it this time. We refuse to raise the minimum wage. We continue to outsource jobs and encourage businesses to do so. We expect austerity to cure the problem and we think the poverty is the fault of the poor.

Ryan is an ass and a one book scholar. I hope his visit to the black caucus puts him in his place.