ASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Republican Representative Paul Ryan on Friday agreed to
meet with the Congressional Black Caucus after members of the group
branded his remarks about inner-city poverty this week "highly
offensive".
The controversy began on
Wednesday after Ryan said on William Bennett's talk radio show,
"Morning in America," that there was a "tailspin of culture, in our
inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of
men not even thinking about working or learning the value of work."
Representative Barbara
Lee of California, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, called
Ryan's remarks a "thinly veiled racial attack."
"Let's be clear, when
Mr. Ryan says 'inner city,' when he says, 'culture,' these are simply
code words for what he really means: 'black'," Lee said in a statement.
Ryan, the 2012
Republican vice presidential candidate, is known for budgets with
proposed deep cuts to programs that help the poor. The potential 2016
presidential contender has made a point of proposing Republican
solutions to ease poverty that focus on the private sector.
The Wisconsin lawmaker,
who chairs the House Budget Committee, said in a statement that he "was
inarticulate" about the point he was trying to make.
"I was not implicating
the culture of one community, but of society as a whole," Ryan said. "We
have allowed our society to isolate or quarantine the poor rather than
integrate people into our communities. The predictable result has been
multi-generational poverty and little opportunity."
Last week Ryan released a
report on the federal government's 50-year-old "War on Poverty" that
concluded that many of the 92 federal programs aimed at assisting the
poor were "haphazard" and contributed to a "poverty trap" that keeps
people dependent on welfare benefits.
Representative Marcia
Fudge, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Representative
Gwen Moore, also from Wisconsin, sent Ryan a letter in which they called
his talk radio remarks "highly offensive" and invited him to a meeting
of the caucus to discuss ways to eradicate poverty.
"A serious policy conversation on poverty should not begin with assumptions or stereotypes," they wrote.
Ryan spokesman William
Allison said on Friday the House Budget Committee chairman "would
welcome a productive conversation on how to better fight poverty, and he
looks forward to meeting with the CBC in the near future."
Allison declined to comment on the timing for Ryan's 2015 budget plan.
House Speaker John
Boehner has repeatedly said the House would pass a budget this year that
would reach balance within 10 years. This would require deep cuts in
federal benefit programs, especially if previously agreed discretionary
spending levels for 2015 are maintained.
Republican lawmakers and
aides said on Friday that party leaders were polling rank-and-file
members to gauge support in the caucus for a budget that balances in 10
years, indicating some uncertainty over the path forward.
No Democrats are likely to vote for a Ryan budget, so to pass, it would need 218 votes out of the party's 233 House members.
A two-year budget deal
negotiated by Ryan and Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman
Patty Murray had to rely on Democrats for passage as 62 Republicans
voted against it.
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