American Idea Foundation

Measuring Results, Expanding Opportunity, Improving Lives.

Mike

With Ways & Means Committee Members, Ryan details how to expand economic opportunities for America’s most vulnerable families and children.

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By: AIF STAFF

This week, AIF President Paul Ryan participated in a roundtable discussion with members of the House Ways & Means Committee about President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and policies to help families and children overcome the economic challenges associated with COVID-19. In his remarks, Ryan, who previously served as Chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, focused on the importance of evidence-based, locally-grown strategies to increase economic opportunities.

To view Ryan’s remarks, click here. Excerpts of Ryan’s remarks, edited slightly for clarity, follow.  

“As a point of personal privilege: The best experiences I had were in this committee’s jurisdiction. The fondest memories, and I had a great 10-term career, were made here. I loved it. I’m so grateful for it. It is in this committee where some of the most important work for the country is done and it’s just a wonderful place to be.”

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“It’s going to be harder to move the Democratic Party back to where they once were, which is with us on moving people from welfare to work. This is why I think the progressives are going full tilt, trying to get this [reconciliation] plan in place, believing — maybe rightfully so, that once they put this stuff in place, it’s going to be really hard to undo and that means we turn into a European social welfare state with stagnant economic growth, slow upward mobility, and a government more designed for equality of outcome than equality of opportunity.”

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“We want people to become the best versions of themselves. We want a society of upward mobility and opportunity and we have better ideas for doing that. The cynical, condescending, arrogant, paternalistic philosophy and vision that the left is displaying with these proposals to make people more dependent upon others in government than upon themselves, particularly when they can become dependent upon themselves and grow and rise is a moral high ground that Republicans have to keep, have to fight for, and have to communicate it as hard as they can.”

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“What is the [worst part] among all of these [reconciliation] proposals are these welfare traps and policies that trap people in lives of dependency and complacency and that prevent people from having opportunities to rise. When our businesses are struggling for labor, when we have this tight labor market problem, this is exactly the wrong time put these kinds of policies in place…. My prayer and hope are that some people, even some on the other side of the aisle, realize this is not the way to go.”

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“We’re being challenged from within with polarization, with illiberalism, with welfare state progressivism and we’re being challenged from without, namely by China, Russia, and the rest. These are challenges that require solutions which all revolve around making sure that every single person in this country can be the best version of themselves; that the system of economic growth we have is one that is an escalator of upward mobility and not one that creates dependency. And the last final point I’ll make is that if [Democrats] succeed in passing this [reconciliation bill], they will hasten the debt crisis that we all know is coming in this country.”

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“The most important point [when fighting poverty]is person-to-person interaction. I spent four or five years running around the country with my friend Bob Woodson, touring urban communities, including in many of your districts, and looking for common themes of success. In every instance, the common theme of success and the successful way of battling poverty is person to person, soul to soul.

“This is what I do now at my Foundation and at Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, we run 70 randomized control trials a year around the country studying what works and what doesn’t work based off of the Evidence Act that we passed at the very end of 2018. So, we now have the evidence and the data that shows improvements.

“And to the point Robert just made, the way to get people out of poverty is to interact with them individually and create that human contact…. You need incentive-based and work-based aid but then you’ve got to have a person that works with a poor person or family to help them build. We call it “case management,” and one of the most successful programs is the Padua Project at Catholic Charities Fort Worth. We’ve run these randomized control trials on people that go into it and people that don’t go into it and we see an enormous difference in terms of success when you tie the aid to work and when you pair a “case manager” with the poor family to help them build their own plan and address what makes them vulnerable using carrots and sticks….

“It is a very lonely journey for a person to try to get themselves out of poverty but if you have people that know how to help them get out and can help them build a plan to get themselves out of poverty, the data is here to show that it works….

“Let’s see the progress that has been made. [Let’s see the] mountains of evidence that have been gathered on the best ways to help people get themselves out of poverty — which is individuals connecting with each other. [Let’s use] best practices, proven advocates, and practice strategies that actually help them get themselves out of poverty….

“We’re on the cusp of really breaking through the stalemate of the War on Poverty. I really think we were heading in the right direction where we were going to see reductions in poverty and how people get out of poverty. If this [reconciliation bill] passes, you’re going to wipe out so much of those gains, and that’s what really, really troubles me.”

At “Show Us the Data” Conference, Ryan recognizes advancements in evidence-based policymaking by federal agencies

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By: AIF Staff

Earlier this week, as part of the Coleridge Initiative’s Show Us the Data conference, American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan delivered a keynote address on how the federal government can utilize data and evidence to maximum effect and, in the process, help Americans out of poverty.

The Coleridge Initiative’s conference highlighted the ongoing work of data science teams who are modernizing the federal government’s information systems and dataflow. The conference aimed to answer the questions: How can federal agencies best use data and make informed decisions about what data to invest in? And how can researchers, academic institutions, and publishers help build data and evidence to better inform policy? 

In his remarks, Speaker Ryan highlighted the various steps of the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act. The idea started with a bipartisan Commission, setup by Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray. Then, many of the Commission’s recommendations codified into law. Now, the law is guiding government agencies to develop modern data collection, security, and dissemination practices. These practices will ultimately help the federal government and policymakers utilize and evaluate data which should result in better outcomes, particularly when it comes to fighting poverty.

Ryan’s remarks, which recognized the contributions of those experts who are advancing the data practices of the federal government, are accessible here. A transcript, edited slightly for clarity, follows.

“I spent 20 years in Congress working on a lot of economic issues. I spent five years before that working in the field of economics as a staffer and at think tanks. During my entire career, I found myself always wanting more data and I found myself trying to quantify things

“It’s why I served as Chairman of the Budget Committee and the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and as I looked through my career, what I realized was that when working with agencies like Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), their data wasn’t reaching the furthest extent possible. It wasn’t going where it needed to go. One of the other issues that I felt where the federal government had an important responsibility – and where it was really falling short, was alleviating poverty.

“The federal government does so much in this space. It spends about $1 trillion dollars a year over almost 100 different programs and as we evaluated this spending and looked at all of the data, we realized that we weren’t following the evidence and that the federal government was more or less measuring its progress on this important issue based on inputs. It measured how many programs are we creating and how much money are we spending on these programs and it was not measuring based on results and outcomes. It was not following the best results, finding what works and finding what didn’t work, and moving those taxpayer dollars to things that did work. That wasn’t happening in government so I basically decided to take on the challenge, midway through my career, to try and find a way of de-politicizing fighting poverty and taking the ideology out of these fights.

“And that’s the one other point I would make, which is as I went into this space and tried reforming lots of programs, I found myself in an ideological, partisan battle almost every step of the way as we tried to make things different and better. And so, what I realized was that data is the one thing that is really unassailable. The one unassailable thing today is facts, evidence, scientific data.

“This is what led me down this path and after speaking with a number of economists and teaming up with my buddy Patty Murray (D-WA), who is totally on the other side of the aisle but a good friend of mine nonetheless, we tried to find a way of sorting this out. [We asked] could we get the federal government to really use its data so that partners in academia, partners in the private sector, partners in the vendor community, and government agencies themselves could use this data and evidence? And if so, where would that take us?  Would that make our government work better? Would we be able to achieve the results we want to achieve?

“We can move down the path of making things work better and better fulfilling our goals and our missions and our visions without these hardcore, ideological, partisan battles and that is why we chose the Evidence Act. It’s why Senator Murray and I did a commission and then passed the bill we have now. And I’m really excited about the “Version 2.0” of the Evidence Act, which is where do we go from here, how do we deploy this, how do we make it work so it is better effectuating policy.

“I saw a couple of glimpses of the promise of this approach. I was in Manning, South Carolina earlier this year, visiting for the fourth or fifth time a program that I’m really enamored with, the Nurse-Family Partnership program. The Nurse-Family Partnership is a program that’s been around for a while and is funded through the MIECHV program. It’s one of a few programs where the federal government has been using data and collecting evidence on where a nurse visits a new, first-time mother – usually an inexperienced mother, to help make sure that this mom is really prepared for motherhood by providing prenatal and postnatal care. The results are simply amazing.

“It has a $6 to $1 cost-benefit ratio and there is a $27,000 improvement per family to society in the form of reduced government benefits because of this Nurse-Family Partnership program. And what was this program, politically speaking? It started with President Bush. It got expanded with President Obama and renewed under the Trump Administration. These are three very different presidents, very different administrations. The one thing the program had is unassailable data and evidence that showed it works.

“I saw that particular program as a window into a very positive future where we use data and evidence, working with the private sector, with the academic sector, with colleges and universities, with philanthropies and foundations, and with for-profits and the government and where we can really effectuate policy….

“I think we can leapfrog the stalemate. We can bypass all the unproductive, ideological and partisan gridlock we have and make government work. We can move the needle on the missions that we all want in society: We want poverty to be alleviated. We want upper mobility. We want to solve problems that society has and nowhere is this better made clear than if we follow evidence and data, so much of which is already being collected, but we need the tools and the capabilities to not just understand what’s being collected but empower people to find unassailable, unbiased, objective truth and facts and science and data and evidence so that we can really move the needle and solve problems….

“And so, I just want to commend the Coleridge Initiative and the award winners and say thank you for doing what you’re doing because you’re showing the promise of these ideas that we’ve had all along. Thank you and have a great conference.”

Government Matters Interview: Ryan to policymakers: Follow the data and tie funding to outcomes

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By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – This weekend, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker Paul Ryan talked with Government Matters‘ Mimi Geerges about his work in Congress to fight poverty and expand economic opportunities. In the interview, Speaker Ryan discussed how the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act is currently being utilized by federal agencies to modernize data collection, analysis, security, and dissemination practices.

The implementation of this legislation, which Speaker Ryan sponsored with Senator Patty Murray of Washington, was the subject of Speaker Ryan’s remarks at the 2021 GovDATAx conference. At its core, the legislation is designed to improve the federal government’s use of data, evidence, and analytics so it can allocate funds more effectively and achieve meaningful results through social safety net programs.

Ryan’s interview with Government Matters is available here or by clicking the icon below. Some notable excerpts, edited slightly for clarity, follow.

How Ryan got involved and why he stayed involved in policy discussions about fighting poverty:

“I’ve always had just a big desire to focus on [fighting poverty]. I spent a lot of my time in Congress on these issues and I was just raised with this gorgeous notion of the American Idea, or what I call the American Idea, which is the condition of your birth should not determine the outcome of your life in a free society such as ours. Everybody has the right to rise, but also we should nurture people’s ability to rise and make the most of their life.”

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“When I left Congress, I wanted to still work on some of the ideas that I’m passionate about. I was a policymaker for 20 years in Congress. I left Congress but I didn’t leave my love of public policy, so I decided to start the American Idea Foundation so I could continue to focus on these issues – in particular, fighting poverty, that are very important to me…. I spent years on this first when I was Chairman of the Budget Committee and then when I was Ways and Means Chair. We were coming up on the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty. We had spent $15 trillion yet we hadn’t moved the needle nearly as much as we should have. And so, I spent a lot of my time figuring out what went wrong, what are the lessons, what are the takeaways, and one of the things, using my economic-thinking hat, that I took away was we weren’t measuring things the right way. We measured government’s success in fighting poverty based on effort and inputs. [We measured success by] how much money are we spending, how many programs are we creating versus measuring success on a set of results and outcomes. Where are we really getting people out of poverty? Where are people breaking the cycle of poverty where we deal with the tough issue of multi-generational poverty?

“That is where I got very interested in this issue which spawned me to create the Evidence Commission and then to write the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act to try to move the War on Poverty from an input-based and effort-based measurement system to an outcomes-based system where we actually measure our efforts based on results.”

The Nurse-Family Partnership program is a prime example of using evidence to improve outcomes:

“I was in South Carolina with Senator Tim Scott and Congressmen Joe Wilson and Ralph Norman in June and we went into rural South Carolina and looked at something called the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, which is authorized by a federal program called MIECHV, the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visitation program.

“It is one of the few evidence-based federal programs. What it does is it pairs a nurse with a low-income expectant mother and [the nurse] helps that mother through the prenatal stage up until her child is two years old. They use very rigorous data and reporting for these programs. This program was started by President George W. Bush. It was continued by President Barack Obama and recently reauthorized by President Donald Trump. So, [it expanded during] three different presidential administrations, all because of good data and because it had proven results to show it was working.

“It was not controversial, it was non-partisan. I was involved in each of these Administrations and the results are really clear. A study from 2019 shows that money invested yielded a 6 to 1 benefit to cost ratio. It provides $27,000 in savings per family in the form of reduced public assistance. It improves health outcomes of the mother and of the child. Participants have a higher likelihood of graduating high school and lower incidences of domestic violence.

“In other words, rigorous data is showing that this particular program of intervening and helping young, expectant mothers at the prenatal stage until their child is two years old really makes a difference. And doing these programs with rigorous data makes sure that the programs are done well and done effectively. This is one example of something that I think has worked really well because of data collection and because of evidence and this is the kind of thing that we’re promoting with the American Idea Foundation.”

Why the Evidence Based Policymaking Act was needed:

“It was basically needed because Congress was not evaluating whether what we were doing was working or not. There really wasn’t any process in place to measure the effectiveness and the outcome of our poverty-fighting efforts. The Evidence-Based Policymaking Act was based upon the Evidence Commission that said: “Here’s how you do this, here’s how you can collect data, here’s how you secure data with privacy and cyber protections, and then here’s how you disseminate that so that we can use that and measure whether or not something works or not.” [This way] policymakers can be better informed so that we can tie evidence to funding, so we can go with what works versus what doesn’t work.”

Adopting Best Practices to collect better, more impactful data and evidence:

“I’m a huge believer in what we call Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs). I teach at Notre Dame and I work with Notre Dame’s Laboratory for Economic Opportunity. We run randomized controlled trials, about 75 per year, on poverty programs so you can really measure what works. Using RCTs, using evidence, and then showing policymakers what works and what doesn’t work is, I think, going to really move us so we can be more effective as a federal government, more effective as charities, and more effective as nonprofits.

“And then the other thing I’d say is removing the silos so that data can cross over, so you can cross-connect data so you can learn from it. That’s one of the problems that the federal government has is that we collect data in silos, so break down those silos, allow data-sharing across different data sets, and you can really get some rich, robust research to find out what works and what doesn’t.”

To read the legislative text of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, click here. 

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