American Idea Foundation

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Recapping site visits with South Carolina legislators

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By: AIF Staff

Charleston, SC – Last month, the American Idea Foundation facilitated two site visits in South Carolina, holding roundtable discussions with federal legislators, policy experts, and community leaders. At a tech incubator located in an Opportunity Zone and at Nurse-Family Partnership in McLeod, participants heard testimonials about how some of the policies championed during Paul Ryan’s tenure as Speaker of the House are being implemented.

Following the visits, AIF President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said:

“In my experience, learning from these front-line organizations and talking directly with the individuals doing the hard but amazing work in our communities is incredibly valuable as legislators look to craft more impactful public policies.

“Today’s visits provided first-hand examples of how laws like Opportunity Zones and MIECHV  are making a difference in alleviating poverty, improving outcomes, and expanding economic opportunities for South Carolinians. I’m thankful for my former colleagues in Congress taking the time to see the positive effect of organizations like the Charleston Tech Center and the McLeod Nurse Family Partnership.”

A comprehensive look at these conversations and the major takeaways is available here: Lessons from the front lines of South Carolina. A recap of the local media coverage from the day’s conversations follows.

The State: Former GOP House speaker Paul Ryan to visit Charleston alongside U.S. Sen. Tim Scott

“Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House, will travel to Charleston on Friday in a visit that puts him alongside a popular GOP figure in a state known for having an outsized influence on presidential politics….

“While in Charleston, Ryan will tour the Charleston Tech Center, a newly opened tech incubator located in an Opportunity Zone, a tax program Scott introduced to help revitalize economically distressed communities.”

Read more from The State here.

The Sumter Item: ‘More than health care’: Former House Speaker Paul Ryan visits McLeod Health Clarendon to see Nurse-Family Partnership program

“Nurses in a pregnancy and motherhood program at the county’s only hospital know their work goes beyond health care, breaking barriers between provider and patient, outsider and friend. Now, their stories have reached the ears of who was once one of Congress’ top leaders.

“Children played in the next room last week as McLeod Health Clarendon’s private dining room, which had just the day before hosted a reception marking the hospital’s 70th anniversary, hosted a roundtable discussion about the Nurse-Family Partnership program. Attending were mothers, nurses, hospital executives and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

“Ryan said he has been involved in the war on poverty for more than a decade and that he has spent the last two years since leaving Congress and Washington, D.C., learning about evidence-based poverty-fighting solutions across the country. He founded a nonprofit to promote those solutions and inform policy….

“Four mothers took turns telling their story, their nurses by their side, to Ryan. He heard about the mother who was sick her entire pregnancy and had her texts answered late at night. He heard about the nurse who ensured her mothers were signed up for COVID-19 relief payments. And the nurse who started educating a mother’s young sister on how to care for a newborn when COVID-19 put the mom on a ventilator.

“What Ryan learned from the mothers, nurses and program and hospital leaders was why this program works. “It’s more than health care,” he said.

“The relationship the nurses build with their mothers goes beyond a check-up. They become friends. They help their mothers study for their GED and get a job. They carry their children to let them rest. And to play with the cuties, of course….

“We’re dealing with high-pressure situations, but we’re improving lives,” Miller said. Each nurse usually has at least 25 moms at a time, with 14 nurses covering McLeod Health’s seven-county reach.

“If Ryan was looking for evidence-based solutions, he came to the right place when he visited the rural hospital in Manning. As Frank Daidone, CEO of the national NFP, put it, McLeod’s program is the most efficiently run and best performing NFP in the country.”

Read more from The Sumter Item here. 

Live 5 News: Sen. Scott meets with small businesses at Charleston Tech Center

“Lawmakers met with small businesses on Friday in downtown Charleston to tour the newly opened Charleston Tech Center and discuss the economic impact of opportunity zones.

“United States Senator Tim Scott and former House Speaker Paul Ryan along with US Representatives Joe Wilson and Ralph Norman met with representatives from some of the companies that call the Charleston Tech Center home.

“Ernest Andrade, Executive Director of Charleston Digital Corridor, says the $54 million building on Morrison Drive and the companies housed inside help attract and keep recent college graduates in the city.

“As a state, we were producing them [college graduates], but basically, we were a net exporter of talent to the rest of the country and we had to reverse that,” Andrade said. “We had to basically avoid that brain drain and create opportunities….”

“One of the things that we always thought about when this happened was, we didn’t want this to be a regentrification machine,” Ryan said. “We want it to be about revitalization about bringing capital into these communities to revitalize those communities meaning to revitalize the people in those communities.”

Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said he had worked on similar programs in the past and felt that private investment into communities was one of the best ways to fight poverty.

Read more from Live 5 News here.

WCBD News 2: U.S. Sen. Tim Scott tours Charleston Tech Center as part of ‘opportunity zone’ legislation

Lawmakers from across the state were in the downtown Charleston on Friday to hear from small businesses about how opportunity zones are helping to revitalize part of the Lowcountry.

The Charleston Tech Center, which opened this year, is part of U.S. Senator Tim Scott’s ‘Opportunity Zones’ legislation, which is designed to bring money into impoverished areas and help turn things around.

Sen. Scott hosted former Speaker Paul Ryan along with US Representative Joe Wilson (2nd District), US Representative Ralph Norman (5th District), and staff from U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s office during a trip to the tech center Friday afternoon….

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan said he worked with Congressman and later Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Jack Kemp, many years ago on similar enterprise zones without much legislative success.

“I think the big benefit of Senator Scott‘s legislation is it’s brought tens of billions of dollars of capital into the poorest communities of America. That’s money that would’ve never come otherwise. It’s also brought in the private sector and the public sector to focus on getting people out of poverty, getting revitalized in these poor communities. So, this is an idea a lot of people fought for a long time. Tim Scott actually got it done…”

Sen. Scott says they have seen less than 5% of gentrification in the opportunity zones. He believes this is proof the plan is working.

“This has to be a win-win; a win for investors, a win for citizens, and a win for America and so far, so good,” he said.

Read more from WCBD News 2 here. 

ABC News4: Top lawmakers touring Charleston Tech Center Friday

“Some of the area’s top lawmakers are gathering in Charleston on Friday for a tour of the Charleston Tech Center….

“This is the first office project to be completed as a federally designated Opportunity Zone, which was part of bipartisan legislation led by Sen. Scott. The Charleston Tech Center is part of the city’s Digital Corridor, which looks to enhance the region’s tech economy by attracting these types of businesses to the Holy City.

“The 92,000-square-foot building features its own garage and currently hosts nearly three dozen tech and tech-related companies. $54 million in capital went into the project, potentially creating upwards of 400 jobs.”

Read more from ABC News 4 here. 

The Sumter Item: Paul Ryan visits McLeod Health Clarendon

“Since former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has left Washington, he founded the American Idea Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes poverty-fighting programs and policy to help Americans achieve their idea of the American Dream.

“To further those efforts, he visited McLeod Health Clarendon on Friday to learn about the Manning hospital’s Nurse Family Partnership program.

“The program connects expectant, first-time mothers with a nurse, who helps guide them through the physical, financial and emotional journeys that come with pregnancy and motherhood, and they stay with the mother until their child turns 2.” Read more from The Sumter Item here.

Lessons from the Front-Lines: Touring Opportunity Zones & Nurse-Family Partnerships in Charleston, SC

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By: AIF Staff

In late June, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was joined by Senator Tim Scott and Representatives Ralph Norman and Joe Wilson of South Carolina on a visit to the Charleston Digital Corridor, a 92,000 sq. foot workspace and incubator for local businesses based in the center of a burgeoning Opportunity Zone.

The South Carolina site visits, coordinated by the American Idea Foundation, gave current and former legislators a chance to talk with employers and community-leaders about the progress being made in one of the state’s Opportunity Zones.

Created as part of the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act of 2017, Opportunity Zones are a poverty-fighting tool that provides tax incentives for long-term investments in specific Census tracts. Speaker Ryan and Senator Scott have both been long-time advocates of the policy which aims to revitalize economically-distressed areas through capital incentives. Ryan and the South Carolina legislators talked with some of the 37 job-creators headquartered in the Charleston Tech Center about how Opportunity Zones have spurred business growth in a part of the state where poverty has been persistent.

As Speaker Ryan said during the visit: “The big benefit of Senator Scott‘s [Opportunity Zone] legislation is it has brought tens of billions of dollars of capital into the poorest communities of America. That’s money that would’ve never come otherwise. It’s also brought in the private sector and the public sector to focus on getting people out of poverty.”

Senator Scott added: “This has to be a win-win. A win for investors, a win for citizens, and a win for America and so far, so good.” 

While in South Carolina, Speaker Ryan also had the opportunity to meet with the leaders of the McLeod Health Clarendon’s Nurse-Family Partnership, which empowers first-time mothers by pairing them with trained nurses who provide health care and other social services from their pregnancy to their child’s 2nd birthday.  

Ryan had a moving conversation with program administrators and new mothers who detailed the relationships they formed with medical professionals and discussed how the wrap-around services helped their children and families.

As the local paper, The Sumter Item, reported:

 “Since former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has left Washington, he founded the American Idea Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes poverty-fighting programs and policy to help Americans achieve their idea of the American Dream.

“To further those efforts, he visited McLeod Health Clarendon on Friday to learn about the Manning hospital’s Nurse Family Partnership program.

“The program connects expectant, first-time mothers with a nurse, who helps guide them through the physical, financial and emotional journeys that come with pregnancy and motherhood…. The program has been proven to improve health, economic and parental outcomes, and Paul Ryan held roundtable discussions with hospital leaders, nurses and mothers to learn more.”

The Item went on to cover the visit and its importance, saying in part:

“Nurses in a pregnancy and motherhood program at the county’s only hospital know their work goes beyond health care, breaking barriers between provider and patient, outsider and friend. Now, their stories have reached the ears of who was once one of Congress’ top leaders.

“Children played in the next room last week as McLeod Health Clarendon’s private dining room, which had just the day before hosted a reception marking the hospital’s 70th anniversary, hosted a roundtable discussion about the Nurse-Family Partnership program. Attending were mothers, nurses, hospital executives and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

***

“Four mothers took turns telling their story, their nurses by their side, to Ryan. He heard about the mother who was sick her entire pregnancy and had her texts answered late at night. He heard about the nurse who ensured her mothers were signed up for COVID-19 relief payments. And the nurse who started educating a mother’s young sister on how to care for a newborn when COVID-19 put the mom on a ventilator.

“What Ryan learned from the mothers, nurses and program and hospital leaders was why this program works.

“It’s more than health care,” he said.

***

“If Ryan was looking for evidence-based solutions, he came to the right place when he visited the rural hospital in Manning. As Frank Daidone, CEO of the national NFP, put it, McLeod’s program is the most efficiently run and best performing NFP in the country.”

Since 2014, the Nurse-Family Partnership at McLeod Health has served more than 1,000 families in South Carolina and made over 33,000 home visits. It is an example of the impact that the Nurse-Family Partnership program can have in communities around the country. The program is evidence-based, has been expanded under both Republican and Democratic Administrations, and as Speaker Ryan observed on his visit, it is changing lives on a daily basis.

These site visits are the first of many to be conducted by the American Idea Foundation and are premised on the belief that impactful public policies can be shaped by identifying front-line organizations tackling tough issues, validating their efforts through evidence, and showing lawmakers first-hand how they are expanding opportunities to those in need. 

Ryan discusses stress tests on American democracy, Biden’s opening months, and conservative proposals to promote work and family formation

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By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – In May, former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan was a featured speaker at a virtual event hosted by Yale University’s William F. Buckley program. During the hour-long conversation with Yale University students and alumni, Ryan shared his opinion on President Biden’s first 100 days in office and how legislators can expand economic opportunities through pro-growth policies.

To watch Speaker Ryan’s full remarks, click here, or check out some notable excerpts (edited lightly for clarity) below.

Passing internal and external stress tests of our democracy

“We are tearing each other apart internally with polarization, that’s how democracy is being stress-tested from within, and we have existential challenges from near-peer or peer competition from the likes of China and Russia. We’re getting hit from both sides as a democracy.

“We have to prove that our democracy, our self-governing experiment can outperform these ubiquitous tyrannies like China in the 21st century. There are serious challenges that we have no choice but to overcome because this great experiment of self-government could be realistically displaced by the end of the century by the likes of China, who aim to prove that they’re better, stronger, and nimbler. I don’t think that’s going to happen but that’s the narrative that China would like the world to buy into. I believe we’re going to win this thing, but the faster we get families intact, get people out of poverty, get economic growth going and keep innovation going in this country, then we’re going to overcome these real challenges of democracy. Not tearing ourselves apart from within is the first step.”

Expanding economic opportunities in America’s heartland

“We have a lot of Opportunity Zones in Wisconsin and in the Rust Belt.  There are about 9,000 in America, many of which are in the Rust Belt. [Opportunity Zones] mean you have an incentive to take an investment and put the capital into these dilapidated, poor areas. You keep your investment there for at least 10 years and you don’t pay a capital gains tax on it, so it’s an enormous economic incentive for both rural and inner-city America to receive these kinds of investments. I think that it’s one way in which government can really revitalize certain areas. In the First District [of Wisconsin], I know all the spots that have Opportunity Zones. It’s exactly where you drive by whether you’re in Racine, Kenosha, or Janesville and it is areas that are in dire need of economic development, good jobs, and good investments. There is a tool now [in Opportunity Zones] to do that and we’re just starting to see the fruits of that labor so I think that’s an area where the government could do a lot.

“Another area is skills training and education, getting skills to the person who is from South and Central Wisconsin. We need to do a better job of getting people the skills they need to get good jobs and that means making two-year schooling and associates degrees easier to achieve…. I think there are a lot of techniques we can employ to make sure that people actually get the degree and are not just stuck with debt, but they can also get a good job afterwards… This is how you get innovation into the parts of the country that have not seen it for a long time. If you want Silicon Valley in the Midwest, that’s how you do it.”

A conservative reform debate: Promote work or family formation

“There’s a big debate between conservatives: Should we focus on family formation or should we focus on work?

“I spent my early days on welfare reform when we did it back in the mid-1990 and then I worked on renewing welfare reforms throughout my career and our emphasis was on promoting work. We believed that by promoting work, you’re actually helping families the most. My close friend Mitt Romney has a Child Support Allowance which is more focused on family formation incentives, and there is a debate about this right now in the conservative movement.

“I think, if you have to pick among the two, you could influence one’s work more through government policy than you can influence family formation. A tax credit is going to matter more in terms of moving a person from welfare to work than it is going to move a person to have more children. So, I think you’re going to have more positive policy effects on work-focused policies than on family formation policies.

“At the same time, you don’t want to disincentivize [family formation]. You don’t want to have a marriage penalty and you don’t want to disincentivize child formation. I believe you can build on the existing policies and I would not necessarily erect new policies. I would refine the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit to work better at promoting these laudable goals of keeping families intact, helping families pull themselves up by getting people to work and by getting parents to work. So, I really do think in the debate among conservative reformers, the emphasis on work is really important.

“Right now, you’ve got Biden-economics that is basically attempting to pay people not to work which is the worst of all worlds because people’s skills will atrophy, the economy will have labor shortages, small businesses will go under and as a result, that will lower economic growth and that will lower job creation and that will lower wages.

“I think the fight that we need to have right now is to focus on getting people to work and getting people skills so they can have great jobs. We should focus on upward mobility and that, in my mind’s eye and in this debate that is occurring within conservatism, is where the focus ought to be versus solely focusing on family formation. The point being, there is a good, rich debate in the conservative movement about how best to keep intact families, how best to grow wages and build the escalator of upward mobility and keep ourselves safe and keep ourselves free.”

Biden’s first 100 days & a misalignment with center-right voters

“I would argue that the person who made Joe Biden the President is a unique voter and it’s a voter that you can fairly well extrapolate from states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia or Pennsylvania. It is the voter in the suburban, Congressional district that typically votes for Republicans. The suburban, college-educated, typically white-collar voter was the margin of difference in those key battleground states that gave Joe Biden the presidency and he did legitimately win the presidency. This [type of] voter voted for Joe Biden for two reasons.

“Number one, they didn’t like Donald Trump. They didn’t like Donald Trump’s personality. They didn’t like him on Twitter. They more or less liked the policies but not the man. Number two, they liked the person in Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a nice person. They thought Joe Biden was going to be a centrist who was bringing people together, a consensus-builder. And so, they voted for that.

“My argument in this first 100 days — and look, the reason I think these suburban voters are really more center to center-right is because down ballot they voted for Republicans for the Senate and they voted for the Republican for Congress, but not for President – is the voter that basically made Joe Biden the President, that gave him the Electoral College, that voter is not getting what they voted for. For one reason or another, President Biden has decidedly focused on unifying the Democratic Party and not unifying the country. He is not bringing the country to the center, which is what I think that voter was hoping for and thinking they were going to get in a Biden presidency.”

Missed opportunities for bipartisan consensus

“The first 100 days was determined by two occasions in which President Biden had a glorious opportunity to reach across the aisle, reach consensus, and be a common-ground, consensus-making President.

“Number one: COVID-19 [legislation] where 10 U.S. Senators from the Republican ranks offered Joe Biden a deal, a cooperative agreement, a joint exercise, and that COVID relief package would have been more than sufficient for addressing the needs for COVID and the economy…. I think President Biden had a chance of getting a real good bipartisan win, which would have been good for the country, but he chose not to do that and went with the progressives.

“Number two: Infrastructure. He rolled out his infrastructure bill which is again, a massive blowout of spending. The most generous reading of the bill is about 1/3rd of it is infrastructure and 2/3rds of it is not even infrastructure spending, [coupled] with what we would consider horrendous tax policies, low-growth tax policy which would reignite inversions where corporations move overseas and where we would lose capital and wages would actually be depressed as a result of this. Again, a group of Republicans in the House and the Senate went to the Administration and said: “We want to work with you on infrastructure….” And again, they’ve walked away from this, and tried to go on another reconciliation route where it’s just one party….

“In the first 100 days, I think what the President has done is outsourced the policymaking, the politicking, and the policy design to the progressive wing of the Democratic party, which is the dominant, loud wing of the party.”

Self-determination and promoting opportunity are the American way

“I think the best tool for fighting poverty is free enterprise. Free enterprise applied to the problem of poverty in not only people, but also policies and ideas is a wonderful way in which we can actually break the cycle of poverty, get at the root causes of poverty, and reignite this beautiful notion of upward mobility.

“The idea of a government built upon equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome; a government based on natural rights and natural law where we have a pluralistic society where we are free to pursue our dreams and where the condition of our birth doesn’t determine the outcome of our life, that’s the kind of country I enjoy living in. That’s the kind of country I want to continue living in. That’s the kind of country I think the center-right movement has got to improve its game to be able to deliver and to offer the kinds of services and government that I would argue a center-right country would like to have.”