Milwaukee’s Moore Decries Paul Ryan’s Budget As Favoring Wealthy

Milwaukee Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore is joining members of the Asian Pacific and Hispanic congressional caucuses in speaking out against Janesville GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan. She says the plan cuts programs for minority communities in favor of tax cuts for millionaires.

Ryan’s ten-year budget plan passed the House last week by a narrow margin. It makes large cuts in social programs, boosts the defense budget, and balances the budget through repealing the Afforable Care Act, along with cuts in Medicaid and food stamps.

Moore says the cuts are based on Ryan’s faulty premise about the failure of anti-poverty programs.

“[Ryan’s] take on talking about poverty is to say, ‘We’ve spent billions or trillions of dollars on poverty programs and poverty won,’” Moore said. “In fact, these poverty programs have helped raise people into the middle class. Millions of people, and not just people of color.”

Ryan will be meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus next week just before holding a hearing on the “War on Poverty.” Moore says she plans to urge his support for reviving a program that was part of President Obama’s stimulus plan. The program targets communities with persistent poverty by requiring 10 percent of all federal aid programs to go to communities where 20 percent of the population has lived in poverty for thirty years or more.

“This is not a partisan thing, it’s not a racial thing. It’s not an urban or a rural thing,” Moore said. “If we were to implement that, it would touch … 50-50 Democrats/Republicans, rural areas and urban communities. And we see this as an opportunity.”

Ryan’s budget is unlikely to win support in the Senate, where Democrats and two Independents hold 55 of the 100 seats.