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 Ryan, his party's vice presidential candidate in 2012, is best
known for his budget blueprints marked by deep domestic spending
cuts. This time, the chairman of the House Budget Committee will
unveil his plan to keep social safety net funding at the same levels
but change the way it is used in a speech on Thursday to the
American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in
Washington.
Instead of distributing money to the poor via food stamps, welfare
checks and housing subsidies, Ryan would leave it up to states and
local groups to apply for block grants aimed at encouraging people
to take entry-level jobs instead of staying home and receiving
welfare benefits.
Bob Woodson, who helped develop the plan as founder of the Center
for Neighborhood Enterprise, said Ryan's grant program would be more
flexible and better tailored to poor communities' needs. Community
and faith-based organizations would apply for funds and have to
demonstrate they can produce positive results, he said.
 "Everything is intended to reward work," said Woodson, whose
tax-exempt nonprofit group supports organizations in troubled
neighborhoods. "It has as its goal to produce greater independence
and self-sufficiency and not just to continue to tangle people in a
safety net web."
Ryan is seen as a possible Republican presidential contender for
2016. Should he seek that nomination, many of the ideas he will
present in a speech on Thursday to the American Enterprise Institute
are likely to find their way into his campaign platform.
The Republican congressman from Wisconsin said in a report in March
that existing federal safety net programs were haphazard and had
largely failed to reduce poverty over the past 50 years, despite a
cost of $799 billion in fiscal 2012.
Some groups who advocate for the poor are already criticizing Ryan's
approach and assumptions. The Center for Budget and Policy
Priorities, a liberal think tank in Washington, argued that Columbia
University research shows that food stamps and the earned income tax
credit have reduced poverty rates significantly since 1967.
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Ryan "is entitled to propose whatever he wants," said Robert
Greenstein, CBPP's president. "He is not, however, entitled to
distort the nation's poverty record to sell his plan - and hopefully
he will not do so."
One area of rare agreement between Ryan and Democratic President
Barack Obama is the proposed expansion of the earned income tax
credit to include single earners. The credit provides a refund check
to the working poor to boost income and encourage work.
Ryan's plan will also seek to increase choice in public education
and ease regulations associated with licensing for jobs such as taxi
drivers, which in some states prohibit those with criminal records,
said Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has
reviewed the plan.
Democrats planned to use Ryan's speech to promote their
alternatives, such as Obama's proposal to raise the federal minimum
wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25.
"We will oppose any plan that uses the sunny language of 'reform' as
a guise to cut vital safety-net programs," U.S. Representative
Barbara Lee, Democrat from California, and U.S. Representative Chris
Van Hollen, Democrat from Maryland, wrote in an opinion piece
published online on Wednesday by The Huffington Post.
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Jan Paschal)
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