Are there any cons in poverty?

What are the pros and cons of Paul Ryan's op-ed on poverty, July 2014?

• Paul Ryan has an Op-Ed in USA Today discussing Opportunity Grants as a tool for the federal government to work on poverty. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/07/23/paul-ryan-an-opportunity-to-cut-poverty/13069345/ The long and short of it is to make the federal government more of a coach and a referee than player. He talks of consolidation of programs, block grants, and approval to states, but also talks of holding the third party and state welfare agencies accountable. What are the pros and cons of this plan? Has this been tried before? If your answer veers into partisan politics, please identify where you're coming from (party or label), and please keep it focused on poverty programs, this one in particular.

• Answer:

  Update: I wanted to share this analysis: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-28/paul-ryan-s-critics-miss-the-big-picture Ryan’s plan is the first glimmer of a big awakening on the right -- the realization that the crisis we now face isn't the same as the one we faced in 1981. Perhaps a decade-and-a-half of http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/us-household-income.jpg andhttp://www.businessinsider.com/american-household-mobility-rate-falls-2014-7 has finally cracked the hard shell of triumphal post-Reaganism. If so, the fear that the conservative movement would degenerate forever into obstructionist self-parody -- that the Tea Party is the future -- has proven unfounded. Think about it: In 2014, the Republican Party’s main idea man -- who just two years ago ran for vice president on the same ticket as a man who called the poorer half of America “takers” -- is now proposing to use a government bureaucracy to send social workers to help poor people make more money, while simultaneously mailing them government checks. That is a big, big deal. Compared with that epochal shift, the particulars of Ryan’s plan hardly matter. Original answer: Here is more detail: http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/expanding_opportunity_in_america.pdf. More here: https://www.economy.com/dismal/blog/blog.asp?cid=249113 Ryan proposes consolidating several current means-tested programs into a single, deficit-neutral Opportunity Grant that would give states flexibility, but also make them accountable for results. As a side note, he offers suggestions for designing such block grants so they have a countercyclical impact on economic growth: “...[T]he block grant could vary based on the level of unemployment in a state. If unemployment rose beyond 6.5%, there could be an automatic increase in the level of the Opportunity Grant funding, which would automatically fall with unemployment.” Designing welfare programs to function as automatic stabilizers accepts a basic tenet of Keynesian thought: that more government spending during downturns can help the economy recovery. The inclusion of Keynesian thinking in a Republican proposal is noteworthy, given that pro-growth austerity policies are more common from the GOP than countercyclical fiscal policy. Allow me to pull some quotes from the op-ed that I like: I don't have all the answers. Nobody does. Don't just pass a law and hope for the best. If you've got an idea, let's test it and see the results. All in all, I give the proposal high marks as the starting point for a discussion. No politician of either party should be afraid of experimenting on improving any program -- that's their job. Edit: I realize I didn't actually answer the question, which asked for pros and cons. Pros: it's a clear statement that acknowledges that poverty exists, and isn't solely the fault of the impoverished. The distinction between 'situational poverty' and 'generational poverty' is the sort of nuance we don't often see from Republican politicians. It acknowledges that government can play a positive role in reducing generational poverty, while acknowledging that existing programs have problems. Cons: I'm not convinced block granting to states is the best solution.