Blake Moore: “Thank you so much, Mr. Pocan. And I want to join my other colleagues for thanking you for your stewardship with the…”

“Thank you so much, Mr. Pocan. And I want to join my other colleagues for thanking you for your stewardship with the Progressive Caucus and putting this Special Order together. I won't waste a lot of time complimenting our fellow Wisconsinite for at least listening to some of the ideas that have come from the Democratic side in his poverty plan. I think that looking at mandatory minimums is a long overdue sort of proposal that needs to get some traction. Certainly, expanding the earned income tax credit for millions of Americans will make a true difference in many people's lives, and I just want to congratulate Mr. Ryan for that. But let me be really clear. You don't have to really go through the entire 70 pages of his proposal because he starts right out in the beginning telling you that he doesn't believe that the safety net programs, that the efforts to help people get out of poverty for all these years, have been very helpful. He starts off by calling them a failure. We all know that many of the programs created under FDR and President Lyndon Baines Johnson literally ended poverty among the elderly, for example. And we have seen poverty, as compared to what it would have been, cut at least by half because of Medicaid, because of Medicare, because of food stamps, because of other sorts of programs. Yet, I guess Mr. Ryan believes that if you just keep saying it enough times, it will come true. We have heard Mr.…”