On June 7, 2016, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) made good on his long-standing commitment to address the pernicious issue of poverty in the United States.  Speaker Ryan joined other House leaders at a drug rehabilitation facility in Southeast Washington, D.C. to unveil their “Better Way” to fight poverty and increase “opportunity and upward mobility.”

The detailed Better Way policy prescriptions on six key national issues are intended to counteract the narrative that the GOP does not possess an alternative agenda during the Obama presidency. 

During his announcement, Speaker Ryan said, “We think the way to fight poverty is to fight its symptoms.”  The report’s fundamental conclusion is similar to past CAGW Wastewatcher articles detailing that the 1964 War on Poverty has resulted in a bloated and wasteful federal government that maintains a complicated web of more than 80 poverty-related programs and has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars in a failed attempt to help low-income Americans.  After a half-century of the War on Poverty, the poverty rate went from 14.7 percent in 1966 to 14.8 percent in 2014.  President Reagan’s words ring even truer today: “The federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.”

A key tenet of Speaker Ryan’s plan is to identify and eliminate overlap and duplication in these programs.  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has done an exceptional job of pinpointing the thousands of federal programs and agencies that perform the same job or exist for the same purpose.  For example, two programs in two different agencies are tasked with inspecting the same type of catfish, and there are 45 programs in nine different agencies to help people with disabilities find employment.  On April 13, 2016, GAO released its sixth annual report on the topic.  To date, less than half of GAO’s recommendations have been fully addressed.

Another crucial part of the plan is reducing improper payments, which have reached an all-time high of $136.7 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2015.  Since 2004, the federal government has improperly paid out $1.13 trillion.  The main culprit in these bogus payments is the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which alone squandered $89.8 billion in FY 2015. 

A final point of emphasis in the plan is measuring results, not just intentions.  Far too often, the political incentives in Congress favor spending more taxpayer money or creating another government program to fix a problem.  This mindset frequently leads to the situation that currently exists in the war on poverty:  dozens of overlapping and ineffective programs failing to accomplish hard objectives and wasting pubic funds in the process.  The Better Way plan makes a direct reference to this problem:  “The incentive should be for government, on behalf of the taxpayer, to identify and reduce duplication, to find solutions that are cost-effective, to ensure individuals escape poverty, and to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.”

The little-acknowledged secret inherent in fixing the federal government’s poverty programs is that meaningful reform and streamlining would do more to beat back poverty.  There would be fewer Americans in need of government assistance and more Americans leading healthy, independent financial lives.  That objective is a staple of the “Better Way” is an encouraging sign for the future.