By: Paul Ryan & Les Ford
In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Les Ford, President of Ford Policy Solutions, outline the (Resources for Independence Stability, and Employment) RISE Pilot Programs, a way to modernize the social safety net so it promotes employment and upward mobility.
Ryan and Ford’s op-ed is accessible here. Excerpts of the piece follow.
Aug. 22 marks the 30th anniversary of the 1996 welfare reform law, aka the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. A rare bipartisan domestic-policy achievement, it began with a simple insight: Government assistance should help people move toward work and independence, not make poverty a permanent condition.
With labor-force participation declining, anxiety over AI-caused job displacements on the rise, and millions of families seemingly stuck in poverty, the very principle that guided the 1996 reform is in danger of being discarded. States should design a simpler safety net that rewards work, using 21st-century technology to do so.
Instead, technology leaders and politicians are endorsing universal basic income—regular cash payments regardless of work. Local governments have already launched at least 122 guaranteed-income pilots, which apply income limits but retain UBI’s defining feature: unconditional cash.
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Rather than reforming the safety net that discourages work and marriage, UBI would make unconditional assistance a permanent feature.
Unconditional cash, the record shows, reduces work. Experiments with negative income tax in the 1970s consistently produced employment and earnings losses. More recently, an OpenResearch randomized trial in Illinois and Texas found that guaranteed income reduced labor-force participation by 4.1 percentage points and annual earnings by roughly $1,800. An American Enterprise Institute review of the few robust U.S. guaranteed-income experiments likewise found lower employment.
UBI would also be enormously expensive…
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Channeling the bipartisan spirit of 1996 welfare reform, we are teaming up with states, technologists and nonprofits to launch Resources for Independence, Stability and Employment Pilot Programs.
Through RISE pilots, states can attempt to address the deepest flaws of the current system. A RISE pilot will combine current benefits into one trackable, flexible benefit; phase that benefit down gradually as earnings rise; pair families with case management to tackle core issues; and require work, education, or training. RISE pilots won’t assume success. Results will be assessed using randomized controlled trial standards.
States once lacked the technology to modernize benefits. Today, innovative privacy-protected platforms can replace the patchwork of cards, vouchers and payments with one system that distributes benefits, applies requirements, audits spending and adjusts assistance continuously as incomes rise—ensuring that every earned dollar leaves a family better off. This removes the benefit cliffs and delivers a safety net designed to help parents move toward lasting independence.
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Thirty years after welfare reform, America can build on its legacy by fixing the incentives that trap families in poverty. Or we can abandon the work-first principle and layer unconditional cash onto an already failing system.
Our safety net should catch people when they fall. It shouldn’t hold them down or pay them to remain there.