Your newest fraudulent poverty crusader is the Tea Party’s Mike Lee

[DonViejo]

Tea Party senator will help the poor by drastically reducing their benefits while lecturing them about the market

ALEX PAREENE



Have you heard about the hot new trend that is sweeping the Republican Party? No, not “endorsing a celebrity’s confused defense of Jim Crow,” I am talking about “caring about poverty.” Marco Rubio cares. Paul Ryan cares. Rand Paul cares. Even Eric Cantor cares. Now, it can be revealed that Sen. Mike Lee also secretly cares very deeply about the plight of the poor.

“Tackling poverty may seem a counterintuitive agenda for one of the most conservative figures in Congress,” the Guardian says, but we have seen many examples over the last few months of how easily a far-right figure can earn positive press simply by stating that it is bad that some people are very poor and that something should be done about that. (Though to be fair to the press, it is actually pretty unusual to hear any politician admit that many Americans are very poor, and the last prominent politician to campaign on a platform of doing something about it turned out to be a toxic narcissist.)

Lee, best known for being a less telegenic Ted Cruz, declared a “war on poverty” last November. Unlike the prior War on Poverty, which was made up of various policies designed to alleviate poverty (and which was much more successful than its critics have claimed), Lee’s war on poverty is mainly about making the rhetorical case that government causes poverty and that eliminating welfare benefits for the poor will somehow spur “market forces” to solve the problem.

Here are Lee’s policy proposals, as described by the Guardian:

“A bill, introduced last week, that would restore a work requirement for recipients of food stamps….”

“capping means-tested welfare spending at 2007 levels”

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/20/your_newest_fraudulent_poverty_crusader_is_mike_lee/

[Nanjing to Seoul]

1. Graphic warning please. That photo can cause nightmares!