Hillary Clinton's Poor Plan

Senator Clinton announced her plan to cut poverty just days before the Ohio primary.

Why? Really, why does she think this will help her win – or help build public will for the policies she promotes: like a higher minimum wage, pre-K, improving child support collection, etc?

Her plan incorporates lots of ideas we’ve identified and include on our list of new ideas for good jobs: democratic workplaces, health care, paid family leave, etc. She also has a laundry list of additional good ideas that support economic and social mobility: expanding green jobs, more strategies for worker advancement, etc.

It’s so…. not cool…. that she put it all these great ideas under the poverty headline!

Using the poverty banner means it is unlikely that this plan will generate support. While lots of people want to do something about poverty—it’s not a high priority for voters.

I’ve written about this before.

• The U.S. definition of poverty is out of date and flawed.
• Public understanding of the causes of and remedies for poverty hinders adoption of the policy solutions we seek to address it.
• Defining the problem as “poverty” opens the door to a losing scenario in the legislative debate. Media will portray the options as two competing proposals: one we like (comprehensive approach to addressing inequality and economic mobility) and one we don’t (solve poverty with marriage and harder work). We already lost that fight in battles over welfare. Why we would we want to engage in it again?

In fact, she gave the Heritage Foundation an opening:

Robert Rector, senior research fellow on welfare and family issues at the Heritage Foundation, says Clinton refuses to even acknowledge the two primary causes of child poverty -- out-of-wedlock births, and parents living on welfare instead of working. "What she wants to do is combat poverty by putting the responsibility on the U.S. taxpayer, who already spends about $450 billion a year fighting poverty," says Rector, "while [at the same time] specifically avoiding the issue of changing the behaviors that are the cause of poverty.”

See the problem?

We present these findings, and more, in a variety of media. Check out the newest version of The Mobility Agenda’s “New Lens on Policy”.