Paul Ryan: Mission Is to Address Root Causes of Poverty, Not Only the Symptoms

Ryan said he and Romney are worried about more people becoming dependent on government and not themselves, "because by promoting more dependency, by not having jobs and economic growth, people miss their potential."

P>DOVER, NH (CNSNews.com) - GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, speaking to supporters in Dover, N.H. said, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's mission is to address the "root causes of poverty instead of simply treating the symptoms."

"So, our goal, our mission is to address the root causes of poverty instead of simply treating the symptoms of poverty. That's very critical. You see, by going after the root causes of poverty, trying to break the cycle of poverty, you need economic growth. You need job creation. You need higher take-home pay," Ryan said.

Ryan said the Obama economy "is not providing the kind of economic growth, the job creation, the system of upward mobility, the system of opportunity that we've historically had in this country."

He acknowledged that President Barack Obama came into office "with a real mess on his hands - no two ways about that."

The problem was, "he didn't make things better," Ryan said. "We don't have the kind of recovery we ought to be having, especially based on the kind of recession we had.

"So, when just last month alone, for every person who found a job, four people stopped looking for a job. We need to create at least 150,000 every single month just to keep pace with population," Ryan said.

Ryan said he and Romney are worried about more people becoming dependent on government and not themselves, "because by promoting more dependency, by not having jobs and economic growth, people miss their potential."

"We should not be measuring the progress of our social programs - programs like food stamps - based upon how many people receive them. We should be measuring the progress of our social programs by how many people we transition off of them into lives of self-sufficiency and jobs and upward mobility. That's not what we're getting in this economy," Ryan added.

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