The Republicans are offering some smart proposals for fighting poverty
For too long the two dominant ways of dealing with poverty in America involved building government bureaucracy or benign neglect.
Congressional Republicans have proposed another way, titled "A Better Way: Our Vision for a Confident America."
This would use government at its best to identify programs that work and then help to scale them up.
The document produced by congressional leaders headed by House Speaker Paul Ryan is impressive in its tone and its depth. The tone is free of victim blaming, it supports jobs and it is full of smart ideas. The idea is not to grow government but to empower families.
The plan has four key principles:
¦ Expect capable adults to either work or prepare for work.
¦ Make incentives lead to work and not dependency.
¦ Measure results.
¦ Focus on supporting people who need it most.
LOCAL MODELS OF SUCCESS
Ryan's committee ought to visit Jacksonville and see the smart programs that are working here.
¦ The Early Learning Coalition of Duval has not only rated child care programs but then helps programs improve their ratings.
¦ Nemours BrightStart! has a proven program to raise the reading levels of preschoolers with reading deficits.
¦ The 1,000 in 1,000 program from Family Foundations has broken the code on how to raise people out of poverty.
¦ Operation New Hope has taken ex-offenders and provided them with the skills to get jobs.
Too often, government builds bureaucracies in which programs matter, not people. Of course, there are some good programs and good people.
In typical government fashion today, there are 13 federal agencies running more than 80 federal programs that often duplicate or overlap services with too little attention to results.
Even worse, certain government incentives make conditions worse.
If programs don't work, they must be reformed or given a quick death.
The report notes that government should support the three key elements of staying out of poverty:
1. Graduate from high school.
2. Work fulltime.
3. Delay having children until after marriage.
Government should help encourage people to meet all three goals.
Unfortunately, the current structure of means-tested welfare penalizes people if a couple is married.
The key role for government is to find cost-effective solutions, reduce duplication and reduce waste, fraud and abuse.
One good idea is to provide funding for employers to train people on the job. That's more likely to produce practical skills that lead to a job.
The report notes that child care is essential for families trying to pull out of poverty.
A modest example of success: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the welfare reform led by President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It included strong work requirements. Employment of single mothers increased and child poverty dropped.
Even so, about half of those on the welfare reform plan were not working, so new reforms and supports are needed.
Yet, in some states, it's financially smarter to stay on welfare than give up benefits and increase taxes by going to work.
States need flexibility to make work more economical than welfare. One solution is to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit as people transition from welfare to work.
Other suggested reforms:
¦ Connect child support to work.
¦ Provide incentives to states to find work strategies for unemployment insurance.
¦ Reform Supplemental Social Security to offer better services, such as special education training, rather than just transferring cash.
The federal bureaucracy is going to resist measurements or set up programs that are difficult to compare.
In fact, only about one-third of federal government programs have been evaluated in the last five years, reports the Government Accountability Office.
"Agencies also cannot show the benefits of the programs they administer and cannot determine what if any unintended consequences are created," the report stated.
In the rare cases when federal programs are evaluated according to the gold standard of random assignment, nine of 10 evaluations found weak or no effects.
One smart idea from the report is to use a three-tier process:
¦ Fund development and preliminary testing.
¦ Evaluate programs that get past the first stage.
¦ Fund expansion of programs proven to be effective.
A version of this is called Social Impact Financing:
¦ Government determines a desired outcome and agrees to pay for it.
¦ An intermediary identifies a service provider, arranges for private investors to fund the services and monitors progress.
¦ If the outcome is achieved, the government reimburses the intermediary plus a return based on success.
To quote the report, "Families deserve access to child care and development services that are based on results, not good intentions."
That means reducing bureaucracy, empowering states, streamlining federal funding and demanding results.
The bureaucracy will resist this with all of its might, which means it will take strong leadership from the presidency and Congress.
That's not on the horizon right now, but that doesn't mean that we should just give up.
Let's fight poverty the right way.