*Strategic Safety Net Cuts Underway: White Hs. Claims WAR ON POVERTY 'LARGELY OVER' [View all]

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"With 'Carefully Calculated Strategy' to Slash Safety Net Underway, White House Claims War on Poverty 'Largely Over,'" New Trump administration report calls for imposing work requirements for federal benefits programs, which anti-poverty advocates warn would harm poor Americans, By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, July 13, 2018. -EXCERPTS:

Anti-poverty advocates are rejecting a new Trump administration report that ridiculously declares the "WAR ON POVERTY IS LARGELY OVER AND A SUCESS." In the words of Rebecca Vallas at the Center for American Progress, it is "part of a carefully calculated strategy to reinforce myths about the people these programs help" and "to smear these programs with a dog-whistle of welfare, in order to make them easier to cut." Emphasizing the absurdity of the report's claims, AJ+ noted that NEARLY 41 MILLION Americans are living in poverty- a figure that some analyses suggest is even higher.

Although the report and Republican politicians allege that imposing work requirements for social safety net programs would "IMPROVE SELF-SUFFICIENCY," poverty experts highlight analyses that those who are able to work typically do, and warn that such measures cause low-income Americans to lose necessities such as healthcare and housing. And, as the New York Times outlined, the report's figures for the number of people working fewer than 20 hours per week are likely overestimates, particularly for Medicaid. The unemployment rate has declined substantially since 2013.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated this year that three-quarters of food stamp recipients work within a year of participating in the program.

Vallas tweeted: As president, Trump has encouraged and enabled work requirements for benefits programs. In January, his administration issued a guidance for state Medicaid directors, aimed at allowing them to impose requirements, and in April he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to strengthen existing requirements and develop new ones.
The executive order, as Vallas wrote as the time, was also part of Trump and Republicans' "DIVIDE AND CONQUER" strategy to rebrand the programs as "WELFARE," and thus, "tap into racial animus and ugly myths about aid programs in order to pit struggling workers against one other."

Republicans' efforts to implement work requirements aren't contained to the White House- GOP members of Congress are also pursuing them. While House Republicans are trying to force through a work requirements provision in the Farm Bill, the Senate's version of the bill includes no such provision. As lawmakers prepare to reconcile the legislation, some Republicans are pressuring Trump to refuse to sign the bill without the House measure.
>While the GOP works to destroy safety net programs, the international community is growing increasingly alarmed by the high rates of inequality, poverty, and infant mortality in the United States, which were recently detailed in a "scathing" UNITED NATIONS EXPOSE that explored how *"Trump & the GOP-controlled Congress are 'deliberately' working to make these already devastating crises worse by waging war on the poor while lavishing the rich with massive tax cuts."https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/13/carefully-calculated-strategy-slash-safety-net-underway-white-house-claims-war



- A homeless man looks for food in the garbage along a street in Brownsville, Texas on June 22, 2018.
*Currently over 32 percent of residents in Brownsville live in poverty, one of the highest rates in the nation.*