http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/03/1334077/-Paul-Ryan-hasn-t-passed-his-anti-poverty-plan-yet-but-it-already-failed?detail=email
Back in July, Rep. Paul Ryan released his poverty plan. Not his traditional Medicare-ending budget, but the plan that was supposedly going to show that Paul Ryan is a Republican who cares deeply about poverty and has given a lot of serious policy-oriented thought toward helping people. We'll get to the details in a bit, but the key thing to know is that it turns out Nebraska already tried something very like Ryan's plan, and it didn't work.
Ryan basically wants to divide the poor up into two groups: the deserving poor (elderly and disabled people), who will get special protections from his plans; and the undeserving poor, who will be his guinea pigs. This group would have to sign contracts promising to meet specific goals and would lose aid if they didn't meet the goals, and they'd be trying to hit their goals with lots of personal supervision from the government or a private company with a government contract. If this sounds to you like it would create a lot of the bureaucracy that people like Ryan usually claim to hate, you're not wrong. Nebraska found that the program was incredibly expensive, and produced very mixed results:
Among the hardest-to-employ population, those people with multiple barriers to employment, 46 percent of the program participants were able to get jobs. (That’s compared to 29 percent among those who did not receive the personal care of a dedicated caseworker.) In the final six months of the program, participants earned an average of $548 per month -- 56 percent higher than for those without the assistance.
But the program also cost a lot of money, some $7,400 a year per person. And the jobs participants found were fairly low-paying positions. Only 20 percent of people were employed in jobs that paid more than $8 an hour. Clients were still receiving extensive social services. According to a 2009 evaluation by Mathematica Policy Research, the program’s “benefits did not outweigh its costs. … Services to the very hard to employ resulted in costs to society that exceeded benefits by close to $5,000.”
What’s more, for clients who didn’t face multiple barriers to success -- people who were relatively healthy, had graduated from high school and had been receiving federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds for less than a year -- the program didn’t seem to make any difference at all, says Alicia Meckstroth, a researcher on the Mathematica evaluation. Building Nebraska Families, she says, “did not have any impact at all as far as employment or job retention.”
In short, Nebraska's experience suggests that, if fully funded, Ryan's plan would likely make no difference for many people, while some would get jobs that paid less than what was being spent to help them. For serious, $548 a month. Paul Ryan's big plan to show how serious he is about poverty sounded bad from the beginning. Now we know it's a retread of a failure.
well what did you expect from the author of the voucher plan train wreck it was an abomination that felt good again they do crap then try to smear it on Pres.'s shoes but silence from his side shows there is no stomach for trying to explain the cost and affect. these are the things we need to put out everyday like they put out their lies daily it works look at all they have fooled and think they are voting for their saviors but in reality they are voting for their destruction financially and health care, those that vote just to support the hate know this you have republican cross hairs on your backs too, what happens to us happens to you no privilege or entitlement just a place in the barrel with the rest of us.
he is waiting for them to vote them in 2014 and 16 then the trap springs and we all are caught for 4 years anyway. recognize Nov. 4 republicans or the rest of America?
