{"id":565,"date":"2016-03-24T15:15:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T15:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/?p=565"},"modified":"2016-03-24T15:15:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T15:15:48","slug":"paul-ryan-apologizes-for-calling-the-poor-takers-thinkprogress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/2016\/03\/24\/paul-ryan-apologizes-for-calling-the-poor-takers-thinkprogress\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Ryan Apologizes For Calling The Poor ‘Takers’ | ThinkProgress"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In a Capitol Hill speech billed as a repudiation of the tone of the 2016 election, House Speaker Paul Ryan apologized for his own past rhetoric about poor people of color.\u201cThere was a time when I would talk about a difference between \u2018makers\u2019 and \u2018takers\u2019 in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. \u2018Takers\u2019 wasn\u2019t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don\u2019t want to be dependent.\u201dLater, in response to a question from a Capitol Hill intern, he went further, saying of his past characterization of low-income Americans: \u201cI was callous and I oversimplified and castigated people with a broad brush. There is a lot of that happening in America today.\u201dFor several years \u2014 as he has pushed policies to slash Medicaid funding, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and other social programs \u2014 Ryan has repeatedly referred to poverty as a \u201cculture problem\u201d among people in \u201cinner cities,\u201d where \u201cgenerations of men [are] not even thinking about working.\u201dHis most recent poverty plan takes a punitive stance, punishing people who can\u2019t find a job by a certain mandated deadline by reducing their benefits. While Ryan did express a willingness in Wednesday\u2019s speech to evolve on policies like criminal justice, he offered no changes to this economic model other than more respectful rhetoric regarding the poor.When speaking about the 2016 presidential election, Ryan similarly focused on tone over content lamenting the state of political discourse \u201cfrom both sides,\u201d but declining to call out any candidate or any policy directly.\u201cOur political discourse, it did not used to be this bad, and it does not have to be this way,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to accept this, and we can\u2019t enable it either\u2026We should demand better from ourselves. We should demand better from one another.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Source: Paul Ryan Apologizes For Calling The Poor ‘Takers’ | ThinkProgress<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a Capitol Hill speech billed as a repudiation of the tone of the 2016 election, House Speaker Paul Ryan apologized for his own past rhetoric about poor people of color.\u201cThere was a time when I would talk about a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":464,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/connie-snyder-mick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}