The upside of the Trump-Ryan civil war: Jason Sattler

Hillary Clinton has a new tax plan to take on the dramatic rise in deep poverty over the last two decades. Donald Trump is taking his own more unconventional and perhaps more direct route to addressing poverty in America — destroying Paul Ryan.

After the House speaker told his members that he would no longer defend the Republican nominee and would focus on saving the party’s House majority, Trump fired off three tweets attacking Ryan as, among other things, “our very weak and ineffective leader.” In other words, he has decided to treat his party’s highest ranking elected official like federal judge Gonzalo Curiel or former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.

You can imagine the emergency meeting in Trump Tower where grown men are brainstorming a very mean nickname for Ryan. They must be so sad that they wasted “Lyin’” on Ted Cruz.

Even before a tape revealed Trump trying to impress Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush with boasts about pursuing a married woman and assaulting women, Trump’s poll numbers had been damaged so badly by the first debate that there was GOP concern Congress might be in play. Republicans now have even more reason to worry.

Trump’s words or his diving poll numbers, or a combination of the two, seemed to have irreversibly offended Ryan’s delicate sensibilities. But it’s too little, too late. The only question now is whether one or both of them survive. I vote neither. Because if we really want to fight poverty in America, Paul Ryan — and his devotion to tax cuts for the rich at all costs — must go.

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The speaker’s reputation as an Ayn Randiac eager to catapult grandma off a cliff isn’t the result of some leaked tape from a nightly entertainment news show. His budget proposals all have included massive cuts to the poor and working class that he would then use to fund massive tax breaks, most of which would go to the richest Americans, who are actually doing just fine, thank you.

Since he returned to Washington after playing Boy Wonder in Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, Ryan has not abandoned his desire to make life easier for the affluent. But he has attempted to recast himself as someone who is obsessed with alleviating poverty. He’s so concerned about it that he even secretly visits poor people in the middle of the night, when they are reportedly at their poorest.

The speaker now says he regrets calling the safety net a “hammock” and referring to America as being divided between “takers” and “makers.” But his poverty plan released earlier this year still suggests that he believes the biggest obstacle to solving poverty in America is the biggest “taker” of them all, the federal government.

He’s said that the War on Poverty “has failed” and uses specious statistics to make that case, despite experts finding that government efforts have helped reduce poverty by 40%, lifting millions out of poverty each year. You have to believe that the federal government fails at everything it tries — and that the states are brilliant — to justify what Ryan wants to do, which is to send all money for things like Medicare and food stamps to the states and let them figure it out.

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This isn’t to say Ryan hasn’t wandered into any good ideas. He and Clinton both back Rep. Jim Clyburn’s 10-20-30 plan that targets at least 10% federal funding toward 20% of the population has lived below the poverty line for 30 years. Good. And increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit for childless workers makes sense.

But President Obama proposed that EITC increase first, and he wants to fund it by raising taxes on the rich. Ryan, of course, would fund his version with cuts — which would have to go on top of the cuts we’d need to make to fund the huge cuts in taxes for the rich he proposed again in 2016.

No matter how much Ryan may want you to think he hates poverty, he hates the idea of rich people paying the current tax rates even more. This is why he was, as late as the middle of last week, looking forward to working with a President Trump to “steamroll” Democrats in order to pass trillions in tax breaks.

But that glorious dream may be dead. On Tuesday night, Trump suggested that he isn’t planning to ever have to work with Ryan as Speaker. “I would think that Ryan wouldn't be there — maybe he would be in a different position," he told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. On Wednesday, noting Ryan did not call him after the second debate to say “good going,” he suggested “there’s a whole sinister deal going on.”

By focusing on tearing down his party, Trump could potentially cost the GOP its House majority and Ryan his job.If that's the direction he continues to take, the winner of the 2016 election could be the Americans who are least likely to vote — the poor.

Jason Sattler, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a columnist for The National Memoand the answer to the obscure trivia question, "Who's the guy who tweets as @LOLGOP?"

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