American Idea Foundation

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In a Conversation with Miami University Students, AIF President Paul Ryan talks about Promoting Economic Opportunity, Fighting Poverty & Opportunity Zones

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By: AIF Staff

The American Idea Foundation is founded on the premise that everyone should have the ability to achieve their version of the American Dream. It is why the Foundation works to promote public policies, backed by evidence and data, that expand economic opportunities to more Americans. 

Part of the American Idea Foundation’s work is to introduce free-market principles and policies to new audiences and forcefully make the case for capitalism. This work is particularly important with polls showing that socialism is rising in popularity among younger Americans. 

In keeping with this part of our mission, AIF President and former House Speaker Paul Ryan recently sat down with a group of students from his alma mater, Miami University of Ohio, to discuss the American Idea Foundation, why he was called to public service and the importance of working across the aisle on policies that break through partisan gridlock to meet the pressing challenges facing communities around the country. 

Some highlights from Speaker Ryan’s conversation with the students of Miami University’s Inside Washington program follow. 

On Jack Kemp laying the Ground Work for Opportunity Zones: 
“When I was a young guy, I worked for Jack Kemp. He was my mentor. Jack Kemp was a Member of Congress and a member of the Bush Cabinet who advocated for free-market solutions to poverty. I spent a lot of time as his economic guy and spent a lot of time working with him on these things. Jack was pushing a thing called “Enterprise Zones,” and it took twenty-five years but we got it into law and called them Opportunity Zones. 

“Opportunity Zones, the idea always was, to designate the poorest of the poor areas in America – by census tract is the best way to do it – and allow capital gains tax-free treatment, meaning that if you want to invest in a poor area and you keep your money there for at least a decade, you won’t pay capital gains taxes on it. The idea there is to draw in private capital, take away some of the risk on it so that you incentivize capital to these poor areas. Now, the concern that we’ve always had and what we work on at the American Idea Foundation is: We don’t want a bunch of money to come into Opportunity Zones and have it be used to regentrify or push poor people out of their community or make it someplace for people who want to make money. We want it to be a tool of revitalization to revitalize the people within those zones – so that is basically the goal.”

More Work to be Done to Truly Win the War on Poverty: 
“The War on Poverty was well-intended. It had some successes, no two ways about it, but it also had some failures. One of the failures is a mindset failure. It told the public that, “poverty is not your responsibility, that’s the government’s job.” And what we ended up doing was we segregated the poor. We sort of displaced them and I think we need to reinforce the notion that we need to reintegrate the poor into our minds, into our daily activities, into our vocations and the best way to do this is to reinvigorate the private sector to be involved in fighting poverty. This is also where I think private sector charities have a huge role to play. And so, I think there is a lot of work still to be done to get the right kind of incentives and the right kind of programs. 

“Another law that I passed was the Evidence Act, which is you use data and analytics to build programs that prove effectiveness for getting people out of poverty, because we have sort of just been treating the symptoms of poverty, rather than getting at the root causes of it. If we attack the root causes of poverty by focusing on opportunities, capital, and data and if we help connect the private sector, the public sector, and the philanthropic sector on strategies that have actually been proven to get people out of poverty, I think we can really move the needle.”

Speaker Ryan on being called to public service and pursuing solutions to key policy issues: 
“I started by studying economics and political science at Miami University. I did a semester out here at American University, because Miami didn’t have a program yet, where you took classes and interned a few days a week. So, I never thought I would run for office but after I interned, it led to a full-time job and I ended up working at think tanks in DC and working on the Hill. And what I realized at a very young age was you can make a big difference in public policy at a very young age…

“I loved pushing public policy and advocating for things that I believed in but I came to the conclusion, partly because my Congressman from my hometown of Janesville was leaving to run for the Senate and we had an open seat, that I wanted to be an entrepreneur in public policy and I wanted to really advocate for things. I concluded that rather than work at a think tank and hope that a policy-maker would put it into place, why don’t I just try and be a policymaker and try to put it into place on my own. And that’s really why I ended up running for Congress when I was twenty-seven. I figured that I probably wouldn’t win because it was a Democratic district and because I was young, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I ended up winning the race.  

“So then, I basically spent the next twenty years in Congress working on policies that I cared about, mostly in economics. I ended up chairing Committees and what I realized was that I was able to put myself into a position to put the things that I cared about, read about, wrote about into law…


How the American Idea Foundation allows Ryan to continue promoting policies that work: 
“What I do know is I’m working on making sure that some of the laws that I wrote in 2018 are well-executed. I’m working in an area that I really care a great deal about and that is fighting poverty more effectively. There are center-right poverty ideas that involve the private sector and markets that I think can really move the needle on poverty. I threw myself into this issue mid-career, when we were coming up on the 50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty and I felt like there was a lot of lessons to learn and we hadn’t moved the needle nearly as much as we could.”

Highlighting Ongoing Efforts to Fix our Criminal Justice System

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By: AIF Staff

One of the missions of the American Idea Foundation is to identify policies that expand opportunity for Americans and shine a light on them. This includes expanding opportunities for those individuals who are trying to get their lives back on track following interactions with the criminal justice system.

While there is no question that we must respect the rule of law, there is a growing consensus that the federal government can and should develop policies which ease individuals’ reentry into society. There is also a growing body of evidence and evaluations about how best the federal government can accomplish this. Given the American Idea Foundation’s emphasis on expanding evidence-based public policies with a track record of success, our President, Speaker Paul Ryan, took the opportunity to pen a foreword for a report, produced by the American Enterprise Institute, entitled: Rethinking Reentry.

The report details some of the innovative solutions being advanced to reform our criminal justice system and ease individuals’ transition back into society. In the foreword, Ryan, who also serves as a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, highlighted the First Step Act, which reformed our criminal justice system in a bipartisan way in 2018 and noted that the report’s authors “provide policymakers with the knowledge they need to understand what does and does not work in anti-recidivism efforts.”

As Ryan further explained:

“This volume provides a path forward on new ways to provide risk assessment, which is a key concern to policymakers. Importantly, it also takes on the decidedly less glamorous work of ensuring fidelity in program implementation. Evidence that new programs work is only as good as the faithful replication of program content by program implementers. This volume also identifies best practices on ensuring faithful replication of reentry programs. Finally, this volume ties it all together with a new model for prisoner reentry. Brent Orrell provides a road map to federal and state policymakers for a new approach to anti-recidivism. This new approach unifies a number of methodologies—such as case management, cognitive behavioral therapy, and substance abuse treatment. While modest in initial scope by cautiously calling for an experimental approach with rigorous evaluation, it calls for large-scale reform in how we approach prisoner reentry. If pursued and successful, it could fundamentally shift how we deliver prisoner reentry services in America.”

For those interested in expanding opportunity for those in need, and for those committed to fixing our criminal justice system, the entire report is worth a read and is accessible here. 

Finding Common Ground to Fix the Disability Insurance Program

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By: Ted McCann

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s new plan for individuals with disabilities, she has decided to take a page from House Republicans. Even though it is 5 years after the fact, it is encouraging that Senator Warren has decided to publicly support a program design – a benefit offset – that House Republicans insisted be tested when negotiating the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA15). While we continue to wait for the evaluation of the demonstration project created under BBA15, it is a positive step that leading Democrats are finding common ground with Republicans around the idea of ensuring that individuals on the Disability Insurance (DI) program are able to work to their full ability.

Currently, if an individual is on DI, they enter into a confusing morass of well-intentioned programs designed to help them return to work as soon as they reach the “Trial Work Period” level, or receive earnings above $880 per month in 2020. As the chart below makes clear, trying to understand this morass would be trying for anyone. And, the consequences for an individual on DI making a mistake are dire. If the Agency makes a mistake and provides an overpayment, the individual will have to pay back that overpayment. And, worse, if an individual ends up earning more than what is called the ‘Substantial Gainful Activity’ (SGA) limit, or $1260 per month in 2020, then an individual could no longer be eligible for the DI program, which generally includes health care.

Because of these complex rules and benefit cliffs, individuals on DI are understandably hesitant to return to work. In fact, individuals on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program are more likely to work (though at a lower earnings level) than individuals on the DI program. You would expect that individuals who had a work history, that is, individuals on the DI program, would have a higher work likelihood than individuals without a work history, that is, individuals on the SSI program. One key reason for this lies in how these programs are designed: SSI, rather than having a confusing array of work incentive programs, has a ‘benefit offset’ design. For every dollar above a set-aside threshold an individual earns, they lose $.50 in benefits.

What Senator Warren is proposing is to take the SSI program design and port it into the DI program. Fortunately, there is strong agreement across the aisle to do this. In the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act, then Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Paul Ryan ensured that the Promoting Opportunity Demonstration project was included, and this demonstration would test how strong a work incentive this program design would be in the DI program. Over 10,000 people have enrolled thus far, and the expectation is that we will see results by June 2021.

It is encouraging that Senator Warren has joined her Republicans colleagues in supporting this program design. While there remain differences between the two – namely, where does one set the threshold to begin the ‘benefit offset’ – disability policy remains an area of great possibility. Individuals with disabilities are ill-served by the current system, which locks them into a life where they all too often have to choose between maintaining access to the DI program, or integrating more broadly into the workforce. Allowing individuals on DI to continue to pursue their American dream should remain an important policy goal for the future.