Washington Examiner: Paul Ryan makes clear conservatives have an answer to poverty

During the presidential debates, Mitt Romney noted repeatedly that three years after the Great Recession ended, 46 million Americans are still living in poverty. And last week, Paul Ryan, his running mate, delivered a major address on the problem of poverty in America.

Romney and Ryan belong to the Republican Party, which is supposedly composed of patricians and plutocrats. They're talking about poverty at a time when the nation is paying attention — a much-needed discussion because the issue is the subject of so much political demagoguery. The Romney-Ryan ticket is unlikely to win a majority among low-income voters on Nov. 6, but Americans of all income levels need to know that there is a better approach to poverty than the one that has been failing for decades.

During his 1980 campaign for president, Ronald Reagan spoke about the welfare reforms he had enacted earlier as governor of California. “I don't believe the stereotype, after what we did, of people in need who are there simply because they prefer to be there,” he said. “We found the overwhelming majority would like nothing better than to be out, with jobs for the future, and out here in the society with the rest of us.”

In a similar vein, Ryan argued that Republicans' 1996 reform of cash welfare programs worked because “it encouraged the best in people — it appealed to their desire to shape their own destiny and advance in life.” He explicitly rejected the notion that Americans should “measure compassion by how much government spends, not by how many people we help escape from poverty.” Government has a role in preventing the worst in hard times. But when, as today, millions of willing workers are forced to rely on government assistance, only a reinvigorated private economy can provide long-term economic support for them in the form of jobs.