House Budget Committee to Hold Hearing on Poverty. [View all]

[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