By: AIF Staff
Earlier this summer, the American Idea Foundation facilitated site visits to a Nurse Family Partnership and an Opportunity Zone in South Carolina. The purpose of these visits is, in part, to give legislators the opportunity to listen and learn first-hand from the very people being impacted by the policies they pass. The American Idea Foundation believes that by connecting legislators with these organizations and individuals in our communities and by providing lawmakers with relevant examples and evidence of how public policies are being executed and implemented, Congress can improve outcomes and better people’s lives.
Speaker Ryan was joined on the site visit to the Charleston Digital Corridor by Senator Tim Scott and Representatives Joe Wilson and Ralph Norman. While at the tech incubator, the legislators held a roundtable with area job-creators to discuss how the incentives provided by Opportunity Zones, which were passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, were spurring investment and employment opportunities in a part of South Carolina that has battled persistent poverty.
Earlier this week, Senator Scott was interviewed by RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel on her Real America podcast and touched on the site visit specifically and the Opportunity legislation more broadly.
Listen to the entire episode here and check out the relevant discussion below.
Romney McDaniel: You fought so hard to make sure that [Opportunity Zones] were part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And what that has done for communities around the country — and you can talk about that even more, which is save these communities that were not getting the resources and helping them, investing in them and building them up.
Senator Scott:On a recent Friday, myself and former Speaker Paul Ryan and a number of business leaders and Congressman Ralph Norman and Congressman Joe Wilson, all sat at a table in an Opportunity Zone at a new tech start-up building that is attracting cool companies to provide real jobs in areas of the community that were blighted before.
The person who is the Executive Director of the building said that he’s getting calls from community members asking for training because they’re technologically illiterate. They want to work in this new, shiny building in the neighborhood and we are working on that next iteration, to make sure that the job-training apparatus is close enough to the tech center so they can work and walk in that same community.
And Opportunity Zones, $75 billion of private sector resources, being deployed around the country to the poorest, economically-disadvantaged communities in this country were brought to you by the Republican Party.
We actually work from a theory that common sense leads to common ground and when you find it, you stand on it and people’s lives are better. We don’t care about who gets the credit. We can about who gets it done.
For additional information on the South Carolina site visit, click here.