IF I TOLD YOU THAT THE CURE FOR BACTERIAL INFECTIONS WAS...

(h/t Atrios)

to gradually eliminate antibiotics, you would be justified in thinking that I was a quack.  Following that logic, Sen. Mike Lee is at best a quack because his idea to lessen poverty is to cut anti-poverty programs:

Tea Party's Mike Lee leads unlikely Republican push against poverty

Paul Lewis in Washington
theguardian.com
Wednesday 19 February 2014 09.54 EST

His latest contribution was a bill, introduced last week, that would restore a work requirement for recipients of food stamps that was first introduced by president Bill Clinton in 1996.

Joshua Smith, a senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal thinktank, described the measure as “completely backwards logic”, because it wrongly assumes there are swaths of unemployed people who would work if only they were given a nudge. “In fact, it pretty clear the problem is a lack of labor demand,” he said.

Smith is even more scathing of another proposal contained in Lee’s bill: capping means-tested welfare spending at 2007 levels, a move the senator says will save $2.5tn. The reduction would be adjusted for inflation, phased in over three years, and only come into force when unemployment is below 6%.

But it still constitutes a dramatic reduction on government money spent on the poor – distorting a budget that ordinarily rises and falls depending on the performance of the economy. “It doesn’t make sense,” Smith said. “It can only hurt the most vulnerable people.”

Asked who would bear the burden of the massive welfare cut, Lee was non-committal. “It would have to be worked out between the various state programs, in figuring out how they are going to do more with less money,” he said.