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Washington, DC – This morning at a symposium on the “Next Generation of Evidence,” hosted by the Brookings Institution, former Speaker Paul Ryan shared his thoughts on the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission, recognizing the work of Co-Chairs Ron Haskins and Katherine Abraham and highlighting the work of the American Idea Foundation to expand opportunity.

Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks follow.

On the Evolution of Data and the Success of the Evidence Based Policymaking Commission:

“A few years back, we were getting frustrated in Congress about the lack of evidence in policymaking. Then, we were kind of getting stuck in ideological arguments on how best to fix problems and fight poverty through programs that were already implemented because we had very little data to prove what was working and what was not working. We saw what happened when we actually had measurements, and we felt that was the future. So, we decided to form a commission and I recached over to a friend of mine, Patty Murray, to work on legislation that ultimately got passed.”

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“[The Evidence Based Policymaking Commission] is a commission that actually produced a very good report, and we put much of their recommendations into law and so, all I want to say is that I salute the next generation that is assembled here today to promote evidence-based policymaking. This is the future, the sort of R&D factory for effective policy that we were envisioning. And as a former politician – or as a recovering politician, I should say – this work helps leapfrog partisan, ideological arguments and helps us get to what works: Where is the evidence? How do we make a difference? How do we effectively steward taxpayer dollars? And so, I’m very excited about what you’re all doing. I’m very excited about the next generation of evidence-based policymaking, and I’m very excited that Ron and Catherine Abraham, on behalf of the commission, are going to receive this award.”

How the American Idea Foundation will utilize Data and evidence:

“In my vocational portfolio, there are three things that I am doing: I am working on these issues at AEI, I have my foundation, and I also teach college at Notre Dame. I work with a department there called LEO, the Lab of Economic Opportunity, and we’re doing RCT’s with different charities and it was one of the economists there who gave me the idea of the commission.”

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“What I have learned in my travels across the country and learning about this space was that there really wasn’t a good connector of the grassroots poverty fighters on the ground — who are well-meaning and hard-working, but don’t have access to capital or to academics. They want to do RCT’s and help people but don’t really have access to the other side so that is what the American Idea Foundation is basically going to be. It’s going to be a connector to try and connect all these pieces so that we can have poverty solutions that are proven and effective, and that can be scalable and replicated.

A Role for Government and Civil Society in Expanding Opportunity:

“I think there’s a huge space for civil society and philanthropy and the private sector to play. Absolutely. They’re going to try some innovative ideas that may not be right for government at the moment, and that’s where philanthropy can come in and show programs that actually work and are effective. Philanthropy is probably the key piece of all of this because it can finance programs that work.

“But I also think now, with that next generation coming up in evidence-based policymaking, it is going to be so much easier to move the needle on poverty and to scale programs that are effective. I think that’s going to inform public policymakers, so that public policy is not going in the wrong direction but in the same direction.”

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“There’s going to be clearly a role for government. [It will be] more of a supply line role, than a frontline role…. What I do not think should be done is one [government] replacing the other [civil society]. I think they should come with each other.”

Washington, DC – Last month, former House Speaker Paul Ryan took part in a conversation moderated by Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, focused on increasing the federal government’s use of data and analytics to promote evidence-based public policies.

Video of Speaker Ryan’s conversation, which was part of the 2019 GovDATAx conference, is accessible here. Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks follow.

Linking grassroots organizations with data scientists and policymakers:
“I spent the last six years running around the country, studying poverty, and basically spending time with grassroots poverty-fighters who are doing incredible work, but they’re sort of out there on islands and out on their own. And it occurred to me that so much more can be done if the right resources can come to bear, but also rigorous data and evidence. If you can join those things, you can make a huge difference in the fight on poverty. That’s what my Foundation, which I just launched yesterday, does.”

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“The American Idea Foundation is focused on connecting the dots, connecting the grassroots poverty fighters who have high charisma and high credibility. They know what they’re doing, but they don’t have resources and they don’t have the access to the rigorous data of the academics, and that can really help them build models that are scalable and replicable, and ultimately, that will help you really move the needle on poverty. So, my foundation is going to work on just connecting these dots, so we can really move the needle.”

Rethinking how the federal government measures success in fighting poverty:
“For 50-plus years, we basically have measured our success in the War on Poverty based on effort: What programs do we have? How many programs do we have? How much money? How many people are on the programs? We have not measured our success on outcomes or results, frankly. because we couldn’t measure that. Now we can. And so, we’re in the first generation and the passage of this [Evidence Based Policymaking] law is the beginning, not the end of this process. It’s just the beginning.”

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“Whether it’s working on the issue of recidivism and getting people back into communities, lifelong learning in the 21st century and closing the skills gap, which is extremely important for our economy, or like I said in the beginning in the poverty and welfare space, moving people into work with evidence based data on case management. Those are the three areas where I think evidence can be extremely powerful and you can see breakout reforms in those categories.”

Expanding evidence-based approaches throughout the federal government:
“As the person who co-authored the Evidence Based Policymaking law, this is exactly what we were anticipating and hoping would happen, which is, people from the data-world would convene and work on executing this. I basically see this as a critical tool of policymaking in the 21st century.”

Evaluating the War on Poverty Leads to More Efforts for Data and Analysis:
“We were coming up on the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty and it occurred to me that we should just do a deep scrub of all the federal government’s activities in the War on Poverty on the 50th anniversary: Why don’t we just sort of do a check on them? Where are we? How’s it going, what’s working, what didn’t work, what should we do in the future?

“It took us a whole year in the Budget Committee and our staff basically dropped everything and focused on this and at the time, there was not even a comprehensive listing of what the government did, let alone evidence. We found a number of programs at the time: MIECH-V, that did evidence-based policy, which is very successful. There were some others like Perkins, CTE, and the First Step Act, which is brand new and is one of the last things I really worked to push through. And we basically discovered in doing this taxonomy of all federal poverty programs, what works and what doesn’t work and if there is evidence that this program was really necessary. That’s kind of how I stumbled into this.”

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“In addition to my Foundation which is trying to pair grassroots poverty fighters with data, academics and finances, I’m on the board of the Laboratory for Economic Opportunity (LEO) at Notre Dame. What I found really promising is LEO for years had already been doing this work with Catholic Charities and getting data from Catholic Charities. And so, one of the best things that I think can be done is doing what we call “case management” or “wrap-around services” that move people from poverty to out of poverty. To move people out of poverty, there are a whole host of things you have to do that are customized to a person’s particular needs or a family’s particular needs. Evidence-based policy puts you on a much more reliable path to get a results-oriented approach to fighting poverty. So, the case management system where you have a navigator that works with a family or a person to get them through poverty with evidence really can highlight a way. But now, you can do this government-wide.”

Washington, DC – Last week, the President of the American Idea Foundation and former Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, took part in the 2019 Kemp Leadership Award Dinner and shared his thoughts on the importance of expanding opportunity and upward mobility. Speaker Ryan was a long-time aide to Jack Kemp and was the inaugural recipient of the Kemp Leadership Award in 2011.

At the event, Speaker Ryan took part in a panel discussion with Senators Tim Scott and Marco Rubio that was moderated by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks follow:

On promoting effective public policies via the American Idea Foundation:

“The American Idea Foundation is meant to be not redundant but complementary to the Jack Kemp Foundation, to promote the ideas that Jack taught me, and to advance the ideas that drew me to public service in the first place.”

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“What we’re working on at the American Idea Foundation is to complement these efforts and to go into the poverty-stricken areas of America and work on making sure that these ideas are actually realized: to make sure that opportunity zones are tools of revitalization, not regentrification; to make sure that social impact bonds are being effective; to make sure that this new Evidence Act that we have to use economic incentives and data and analytics is actually occurring, so that we can actually, number one, move the needle on poverty.”

“Number two: The American Idea Foundation is working to prove that free enterprise is the best possible weapon against poverty and socialism that ever will be and use those stories and narratives to re-educate the youth of America, who for some bizarre reason have this historically ignorant, emotional attachment to socialism these days.”

On Jack Kemp’s impact and pursuing a vocation in public service:

“I was a young guy coming out of college in 1992 and the Berlin Wall had just come down. It was not hard to convince young people at that time that socialism was really bad idea. We had tens of millions of people teeming out of Eastern Europe who were my age saying the same thing and I was enamored with economics at the time and in particular, I was enamored with Jack Kemp’s supply-side economics…. So, I went and worked for Jack Kemp at Empower American on economic policies.”

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“I thought at the time that my goal in life was to become an economist. I thought it was going to be a couple years in Washington working at the feet of a guy I really admired in Jack Kemp, then go to graduate school — hopefully at the University of Chicago, and then maybe be the Chief Economist at RW Baird in Milwaukee one day…. It really was Jack that taught me that this is an amazing vocation…. I just couldn’t resist it, so I stayed with it…. It was Jack’s infectious enthusiasm and seeing public service is a wonderful vocation that frankly grew me into this.”

On advancing solutions to promote the American Idea:

“We wanted to execute an agenda and the horizon that we were shooting for was a stronger, more prosperous country, where we reinvigorated upward mobility and the American Idea, which is that the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life. It is a beautiful vision. America is the only country ever founded on an idea. It’s a “natural law” idea where, as Jimmy said, our rights come from God and nature’s God, before government and pre-government. But there are a lot of people in America who don’t see it or think the American Idea is there for them.”

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“I worry the conservative movement as I understand it, which is a Jack Kemp classical-liberal, inclusive, aspirational movement has got a challenging future. And if we don’t reinvigorate the conservative movement in a way that is inclusive, like you do with your recruitment of women, that speaks to people who are non-traditional Republican voters like these gentlemen do, then we will be a minority movement for a long time and the left will win by default.”