Sen. Marco Rubio is another member of the Republican "I care about poverty, honest! Please ignore my policy votes" caucus.
Rep. Paul Ryan isn't the only Republican who's
realized that maybe it would be a good idea, electorally speaking, to
try not to seem entirely heartless:
[Sen. Marco] Rubio said earlier this year that it is time for Republicans to stop focusing on balancing “the budget by saving money on safety-net programs.” [...]
In the states, Republican governors John Kasich (Ohio) and Mike Pence (Indiana) — another pair of potential 2016 candidates — have made moves in their states to expand Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, under Obama’s health-care law. And former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who says he is considering another White House run, recently spent a day talking about the importance of rehabilitation with inmates at the Louisiana state prison in Angola.
It sure would be nice if Republicans were serious about some of these things! Except that most of the Republicans making nice sounds about fighting poverty and so on are really just repackaging the same old Republican attacks in a few layers of gauze and hand waving. And even with that being the case, the bulk of elected Republicans are
still outraged that anyone in their party would talk as if stigmatizing the poor was anything other than a holy calling.
If Republicans want to get serious about poverty, they don't need to come up with big shiny new plans. There are some very simple things they can do: raise the minimum wage. Invest in infrastructure to create jobs and strengthen the economy. Extend emergency unemployment aid. The fact that Republicans—a handful of them, anyway—want to talk about poverty and getting people to work without making sure that the minimum wage will raise families above poverty tells you all you need to know about their sincerity. It's nonexistent.