The Conservative Plan to Tackle Poverty
House Speaker Paul Ryan says that improving the lives of low-income Americans is a top priority. To do that, the GOP plans to help businesses first.
.. In Ryan’s oft-touted policy agenda, “A Better Way,” he argues that social services may help Americans cope with poverty, but they do little to eliminate it. That’s why it’s no surprise that in the GOP’s anti-poverty plan, the welfare system—also called the “entitlement” system, depending on who you ask—is to be a main target for cutbacks.
.. But Ryan made it clear during his speech that altering policies specifically aimed at reducing poverty won’t be an immediate priority. Instead, the GOP will focus on tweaking policies they think will help businesses grow and provide more opportunities for low-income Americans: removing business regulations and cutting taxes, classic conservative solutions for jumpstarting economic growth.
.. Cutting taxes comes next and will most likely ease the tax burden on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Under his proposals, top individual income tax rates would drop from 39 percent to 33 percent, and corporate tax rates would fall from 35 to 20 percent.
.. The problem for Ryan’s approach is that even if the economy does grow from removing business regulations and cutting taxes, it’s not clear that that growth will come in the form of wages for the poorest Americans. More than half of the country’s income growth in the last decade went to the wealthiest 1 percent of American families.
.. That means the traditional Republican plan of spurring growth in order to boost the economic standing of the poorest Americans won’t do much to end poverty unless they can also ensure the money is going to those who need it most.