Rubio proposes big changes to 'war on poverty' as GOP eyes new agenda

Fifty years after Democratic president Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty, Republican leaders sought to recapture the political territory for themselves on Wednesday with a concerted attack on the idea that federal spending is the best weapon.

Florida senator Marco Rubio, a child of Cuban immigrants tipped for his own presidential run, led the charge with a proposal to take most of an estimated 77 separate federal poverty programmes away from Washington and give the money to states to spend on tailored local initiatives instead.

“A vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty with complex and overlapping causes will not be solved by continuing with the same stale Washington ideas,” he said in a speech in the Senate's ornate Lyndon Johnson room.

“They help people deal with poverty but they don't help people emerge from poverty. A nation as large and diverse as the US should have a menu of state and local approaches that are just as diverse.”

The party is trying to counter a perception that it is not interested in the fate of America's poor after recent Congressional attacks on unemployment insurance and food stamp programmes, but a separate press conference hosted by House Republicans showed it is determined to turn LBJ's 'war on poverty' against the Democrats rather than soften its message.

Steve Southerland, another Florida Republican who chairs the party's Anti-Poverty Initiative, told reporters: “While this war may have been launched with the best of intentions, it is clear we are now engaged in a war of attrition. Despite spending $15tn to fight this war, big government ideas of the past are not working. We have a moral obligation to break to the mold.”

Announcing his proposal for 'revenue-neutral flex fund' to move programmes like food stamps under state control, Cruz was equally scathing of federal approaches. “For 50 years now we have tried big government and still too many people remain trapped in despair,” he said.

Both Cruz and Southerland called for more emphasis on job creation policies instead and said remaining safety nets like food stamps or unemployment insurance should include requirements for recipients to work, train or volunteer.

But both House and Senate leaders also dropped hints of concessions, as Democrats continue to make political capital from the GOP's perceived elitism and indifference to widening inequality.

Congressman Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, suggested the party may be prepared to accept compromise legislation that would replace proposed cuts to food stamps with reforms attaching more conditions to their use.

A similar climbdown over the vexed issue of extending unemployment insurance looks increasingly likely after House speaker John Boehner called on Democrats to include reforms and funding proposals in their extension bill.

“The programme as is should not continue,” added Camp. “It needs reform.”

Cruz also acknowledged that a social safety net would always be necessary, especially for the elderly and disabled, and struck a softer tone: drawing on the personal experience of his working class parents as inspiration for a conservative version of the American dream addressing the causes of poverty rather than its consequences.

“We often hear that this issue is a burden but people are not a liability; human beings are an asset,” he said. “Imagine how much greater we would be if the dreams and talents of 40 million human beings were unleashed.”

Stagnating social mobility is expected to be the central message of Obama's state of the union address later this month and defining issue of the 2014 mid-term elections.

On Thursday the White House will also flesh out proposals first announced today to establish five new 'promise zones' to revitalise struggling areas of San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, south-eastern Kentucky and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Whereas Democrats have used the anniversary of LBJ's speech to reinforce their calls for further measures such as increases in the federal minimum wage, the Republican party is seeking a whole-scale rejection of the notion that Washington should be fighting a 'war on poverty'.

But independent poverty experts questioned some of the assumptions and empirical claims made by Rubio and Southerland on Tuesday

Margaret Simms, director of the low-income working families project at the Urban Institute, which was set up to study poverty after LBJ's 1964 speech, said it was misleading of Rubio to claim for example that marriage was the “greatest weapon against poverty”.

While he is right that married couples are much less likely to be poor, said Simms, the causation is often the opposite way around: as unemployed men have worse marriage prospects.

She also said that while Rubio was right to credit states with greater policy innovation – citing successes in Wisconsin, California and Massachusetts – there can also be huge variation in their willingness to tackle poverty at all.

“It is a fair question to ask what has been achieved in the 50 years since the speech, but we have to remember how much America has changed in that time,” added Simms. “Many of these programmes evolved over time in response to changing society.”