Ryan Urges Bid to Move People `From Welfare to Work' This Year

(Bloomberg) -- House Speaker Paul Ryan said lawmakers should take steps this year to move people "from welfare to work" even though there isn’t enough congressional support for a more extensive overhaul of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Congress can enact targeted measures, Ryan said during a speech Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“I think we can make progress on that this year,” said Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican. “In a good, faster-growing economy, it’s the best, perfect time to focus on people who are in persistent poverty or persistently not getting the kind of opportunities."

"But on the big-ticket entitlement programs, that will require a bipartisan consensus, which unfortunately we do not yet have, but we’re just going to keep pushing for it," he said.

Ryan said there is a fiscal, economic and moral argument for reducing the number of federal beneficiaries to give people more opportunities and to limit unsustainable government spending on Social Security, Medicare and welfare. Spending on those programs is a greater driver of U.S. debt than federal discretionary spending, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Edgerton in Washington at aedgerton@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Justin Blum

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