Jeb Bush
Spare me, please. Jeb Bush has taken to the op-ed pages of the
Chicago Tribune to
lecture us about poverty.
Trouble is, from the War on Poverty to the persistence of liberal big city mayors, the same government programs have been in place for over a half-century — and they have failed. We have spent trillions of dollars in the War on Poverty, and poverty not only persists, it is as intractable as ever. This represents a broken promise. And it feeds the anger of Baltimore.
Intractable as ever, eh?
Before the War on Poverty, in the late 1950s, the poverty rate was over 22 percent. Then it went down, reaching a low of 11.1 percent in 1973. Poverty rates started to rise again in 1980, declined somewhat in the 1990s, going back down to 11.3 percent, and then started rising again. Tell me again, Jeb, how we need conservative solutions.
Here are some other things we know about fighting poverty:
Food stamps improve children's health and educational outcomes. The Earned Income Tax Credit boosts employment among single mothers. If you look at the government's Supplemental Poverty Measure, safety net programs cut poverty in half.
Here's something else: Raising the minimum wage would reduce poverty, yet Republicans—Jeb Bush's party—oppose doing so.
We have heard everything Jeb Bush has to say about poverty before. We have heard it so many times, from so many Republicans, and they are as wrong on the facts as they are self-righteous. We have heard the strategy, also embraced by Bush, of blaming teachers, and we have heard the code words he employs that translate to corporate profit.
Do we really need to ask if another Bush promising to be a "compassionate conservative" is the right choice?