Trump Directs Federal Agencies To Strengthen Work Requirements For Public Assistance
April 12, 2018 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Comments Off
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump signed another executive order yesterday. He signed it away from TV cameras and without so much as a single tweet. He’s directed federal agencies to strengthen work requirements for a range of public assistance programs. NPR’s Brakkton Booker reports.
BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Advocates for the poor say most people who receive federal public assistance already work. Folks like Kristen Arant – she’s a single mother who lives in Ohio with her 11-year-old boy. She receives Medicaid and holds a job as a waitress with no benefits while going to school.
KRISTEN ARANT: I don’t have food stamps. I have to go to work, or I don’t have money. All I have is Medicaid. And I need to keep my Medicaid, or I won’t be able to stay healthy and go to work.
BOOKER: Arant says getting that job was hard. She’s recovering from heroin addiction and has a criminal record.
ARANT: Employers are not very quick to work with people who have to go report to probation and parole once a week.
BOOKER: It’s unclear how the Trump administration’s push to strengthen work requirements might affect her. But she says it would be difficult for her to work more. And she worries if she can’t work, she could lose her Medicaid.
ARANT: Thinking about being a full-time college student, caregiving for my son and having to do that with the absence of healthcare – as a person who experiences chronic pain, that thought is gut-wrenchingly terrifying.
BOOKER: The Trump administration basically says it’s spending too much money on low-income assistance, $700 billion just last year. It points to an unemployment rate that’s hovering just above 4 percent as evidence that the economy is strong. Ben Carson is the secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEN CARSON: I think there is a large general sentiment in this country that when jobs are available, work-able people should take those jobs.
BOOKER: Carson says even those who have to sacrifice to hold down a job will find it beneficial in the long run.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CARSON: It is quite apparent in looking at evidence from the past that when work-able individuals are provided the opportunity to work, they tend to require much less in the way of public assistance and tend to continue on an upward trajectory.
BOOKER: Trump is calling on Carson and the secretaries of Labor, Treasury, Agriculture and other agencies to take a fresh look at their public assistance programs. There are already work requirements for most programs, things like SNAP or food stamps, housing assistance and cash welfare. But millions are granted exemptions because they are caring for a relative or enrolled in job training. The administration wants agencies to review who gets those exemptions. Critics, though, say imposing tougher mandates just doesn’t work. The real problem, they say, is that many poor people do have jobs, but the wages aren’t enough to survive on.
REBECCA VALLAS: Pushing for work requirements is at the core of the Republican strategy to reinforce myths about poverty in America.
BOOKER: Rebecca Vallas is with the progressive-leaning Center for American Progress. She says the administration is painting a negative image of the poor.
VALLAS: That the poor are some stagnant group of people who just don’t want to work, that anyone who wants a well-paying job can just snap her fingers and make one appear, and that having a job is all it takes not to be poor.
BOOKER: Trump’s executive order gives agencies 90 days to come up with specifics on how they will strengthen work requirements. Brakkton Booker, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROBOTAKI FT. CLAIRE RIDGELY’S “MONKEY BARS”)
Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Share and Enjoy
Pompeo Vows to Embrace Diplomacy, but Pledges Tougher Line on Russia
April 12, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
“If confirmed, it will be an immediate personal priority to work with those partners to see if such a fix is achievable,” he said. Negotiators from Europe have been working with their United States counterparts on such an agreement since Tuesday at the State Department, their fourth such conclave.
Mr. Pompeo also promised a tougher policy toward Russia.
“Russia continues to act aggressively, enabled by years of soft policy toward that aggression,” he wrote. “That’s now over.”
At the State Department, Mr. Pompeo’s nomination has, like the blossoming cherry trees along the nearby National Mall, been greeted as a harbinger of new life. Gone is the deep gloom engendered by Mr. Tillerson’s contemptuous treatment of veteran diplomats, staff cuts, leaderless drift and unsuccessful reorganization project.
Having already moved away or accepted lucrative jobs, many of the foreign service officers declined Mr. Pompeo’s recent offer to return. But they appreciated the outreach nonetheless, according to a former senior diplomat who had talked to others similarly contacted, but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were intended to be private.
Mr. Pompeo’s call to Mrs. Clinton was particularly surprising, considering his fulminations against her as “morally reprehensible” when he was a member of the House Intelligence Committee after the Benghazi attacks in 2012.
“He’s reached back to every former living secretary of state, again no matter what party, to help receive whatever thoughts, guidance, insights that they would offer up,” said Brian Bulatao, the No. 3 official at the C.I.A. and who has known Mr. Pompeo since their first day as cadets at West Point. “But that’s the kind of style he has. No one’s going to out prepare, out-hustle or outwork Mike.”
Given Mr. Rand’s opposition, Mr. Pompeo may not receive the Senate committee’s blessing, which would be an embarrassing snub. Republicans could still pass his nomination to the full Senate, where 14 Democrats and an independent voted for his nomination as C.I.A. director.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
But none of those votes are assured this time.
He has been meeting with moderates in hopes of persuading at least a few Democrats and independents to back him. Liberal groups are mobilizing to oppose him.
“Mike Pompeo is absolutely the wrong choice for secretary of state,” Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, wrote on Twitter. Even Democratic staff members say Mr. Pompeo is likely to be confirmed.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
Mr. Pompeo’s hard-line foreign policy pronouncements as a conservative four-term Republican congressman from Kansas have caused some unease among the left-leaning, altruistic set at the State Department. In the past, he denounced the Iran nuclear deal, suggested that he supports leadership change in North Korea and supported enhanced interrogation techniques.
But his close connection with Mr. Trump and record of encouraging career employees at the C.I.A. have led many to hope that Mr. Pompeo may once again make their diplomatic efforts relevant.
For many, the change could not come at a more important time as pressing problems pile up — including a looming American military strike on Syria, increasingly toxic relations with Russia and a possible trade war with China.
In many ways, Mr. Pompeo is already the administration’s most important diplomat, having played the primary role in facilitating Mr. Trump’s risky diplomatic overture to North Korea through a channel that runs between the C.I.A. and its counterpart in Pyongyang, the Reconnaissance General Bureau.
Those who have long known Mr. Pompeo say he is perfectly suited for this moment. He graduated first in his class from the United States Military Academy and became a tank commander in Germany. He left the military after just five years, as a captain, to attend Harvard Law School.
Mary Ann Glendon, a law professor at Harvard who hired Mr. Pompeo as a research assistant, said that she “spent a lot of time talking to him about his future plans” — specifically, making his fortune and then going into politics.
“And he did it,” she said.
Not quite. After working for four years as a lawyer in Washington, Mr. Pompeo moved to Wichita, Kan., where he and three friends from West Point enlisted investors to buy four aircraft supply companies. They hoped to transform the industry and make themselves wealthy in the process. But the merged company, Thayer Aerospace, never succeeded.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
“The timing could have been better,” said Jim Gero, the chairman of Thayer’s board. “When I look at my various investments, it wasn’t the best.”
After 10 years, Mr. Pompeo and his partners sold Thayer, and he turned to marketing Chinese-made oil field equipment. Whether he appropriately disclosed that venture at his Senate confirmation hearing last year for the C.I.A. post may become an issue at Thursday’s hearing.
In 2010, Mr. Pompeo joined a crowded field of Republicans vying to win a House seat from Wichita. With substantial donations from Koch Industries, the sprawling industrial conglomerate that is based there and controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, who donate heavily to conservative causes, Mr. Pompeo defeated his opponents in the Tea Party wave that year.
Mr. Pompeo’s financial disclosure reports reveal few assets. He was determined to rescue Thayer Aerospace from the worst of its difficulties, said Mr. Bulatao, who was one of his partners. But his shortfalls as a businessman could endear him to diplomats who believed that Mr. Tillerson’s success as the chairman of Exxon Mobil made him inflexible and arrogant at the State Department.
Mr. Tillerson isolated himself in his executive suite, rarely answered emails or phone calls even from the nation’s highest officials, and gave his cellphone number to almost no one. When the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, tried to reach Mr. Tillerson on his final trip as secretary, Mr. Kelly had to call one of Mr. Tillerson’s aides.
In his opening statement, Mr. Pompeo promised to be different.
“I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty,” he wrote. “I don’t ever stay sequestered on the executive floor of any building.”
Correction: April 11, 2018
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated Mike Pompeo’s role on the House Intelligence Committee after the Benghazi attacks in 2012. He was a member of the committee, not its chairman.
Continue reading the main story