In The News

By: AIF Staff

Since 2022, the American Idea Foundation has offered policy advice, generated awareness, and provided financial support to nearly 30 organizations across the United States. The goal is to help these organizations as they work to alleviate poverty and address complex social challenges in a data-driven, evidence-based way.

Inviting academics to evaluate a program can be a nerve-wrecking experience, but former Speaker of the House and AIF President Paul Ryan believes it is necessary if America wants to break the cycle of poverty and overcome the problems plaguing our communities. In Ryan’s view, it is vital that these front-line organizations match their powerful anecdotal evidence with data and empirically-sound research. By doing so, these organizations will arm policymakers and community leaders with the data and evidence to prioritize what works, deprioritize what doesn’t, and develop a more targeted and effective approach to fighting poverty.

One of the organizations that is committed to developing an initial base of evidence and data around their programming isFamily Promise.

In 2024, AIF partnered with  Family Promise of West Michigan as they, along with Family Promise of Spokane, and the Lord’s Place (located in West Palm Beach), conduct a randomized controlled trial with researchers at Notre Dame’s Laboratory for Economic Opportunities, to study how flexible financial assistance during diversion conversations impacts housing shelter use, housing stability issues, and other outcomes.

The goal of the trial is to determine if individuals who are diverted from homeless shelters, largely through financial assistance or other support services, will have increased housing stability and improved outcomes in terms of income, employment, and overall well-being.

This year, with  the RCT of Family Promise still ongoing, the American Idea Foundation will focus on helping build Family Promise’s capacity in the state of Wisconsin.

Family Promise of Wisconsin is a state-based affiliate of the national Family Promise organization, which works with faith-based and community organizations to move families to stable housing where they can grow and thrive. Family Promise of Wisconsin is focused on ending homelessness by connecting families in need with a suite of services like supplies to meet their basic needs, access to family support and emergency assistance, and other stabilization efforts.

Family Promise of Wisconsin employs a case management model, which means providing individualized, wrap-around support for families and their children during times of great need. The people engaging Family Promise of Wisconsin are often seeking urgent assistance with basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter and Family Promise works tirelessly to address their immediate problems while identifying long-term solutions for shelter.

They try to divert clients away from homelessness and costly shelter stays by instead providing them with alternative temporary housing options. Most individuals who enter emergency shelters tend to remain homeless longer, which is why Family Promise seeks to intervene before that occurs, operating with a lighter touch and supporting individuals as they find alternatives like short-term rental housing or staying with family and friends.

Family Promise uses local resources, volunteers, and organizations to create a network of assistance that keeps families intact and children healthy. As part of the wrap-around support, families are given access to Family Promise services like tutoring, summer programming, and trauma-informed mental health care. The video below provides an overview of their holistic approach.

Across the country, Family Promise has a network of 200 sites in 40 different states. Since 1988, they have helped over 1,000,000 families in times of great need. Most of their families (50%) are minorities and 100% are low-income or no-income. In 2024, they served 25,000 families nation-wide, 50% of whom were minorities and 100% are low-or-no income households.

Family Promise is looking to expand to 8 sites operating full-time in Wisconsin. Thus far, they have served 516 Wisconsin families with 936 children through their four core programs: Prevention, Shelter, Housing, and Stabilization. The support provided by the American Idea Foundation will go towards expanding Family Promise’s operations into areas like Monroe, Ozaukee, and Washington Counties, helping train staff and volunteers, and giving the organization added capacity to help more families and kids with emergency stabilization needs.

As Family Promise summarized in their 2024 Annual Report: “Preventing and ending family homelessness requires a community response. Family Promise maximizes impact through extensive partnerships and collaborative contributions at the national level, as well as through local businesses and community organizations within every community.” The American Idea Foundation is proud to assist them in this noble endeavor and help build a base of evidence that hopefully validates the profound impact Family Promise is having in Wisconsin and around the country.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here. 

By: AIF Staff

Since his time as a Member of Congress, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has believed the case-management model utilized by Catholic Charities of Fort Worth is an effective way to help individuals out of poverty.

How does the Padua Project work?

Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), which has partnered with Catholic Charities of Fort Worth on empirical studies, described the Padua Project this way: 

“The backbone of Padua is wrap-around, “supercharged” case management that involves a two-person team of social workers and begins with building a relationship with clients. The Padua model ensures a high level of personal support for each client. Clients work with their teams to set goals related to asset areas that are key to clients’ long-term success including finances, education, social skills, legal status and physical and emotional well-being.”

The services provided by Catholic Charities Fort Worth through the Padua Project fall into one of five “Out of Poverty Pathways” and include:

• Education: Offering counseling and support for educational milestones.
• Emotional Resiliency: Providing counseling referrals, long-term case management, and mental health programs.
• Employment: Assisting with job searches and career coaching to help clients secure and succeed in employment.
• Financial Resiliency: Teaching financial skills for long-term independence.
• Resource Stability: Offering short-term relief, support for new mothers, and comprehensive refugee services.

It’s a high-touch, labor-intensive care modality designed to help people get back on their feet over the long-term. And it’s delivering results.

Catholic Charities’ approach to expanding upward mobility has been the subject of multiple randomized controlled trials, each with incredibly promising findings, and though there have been challenges along the way, the “Padua Project” has made an enormous impact helping those struggling in Fort Worth, Texas.

Because of this hands-on, comprehensive intervention, people like Keith Collins have benefitted. As Cynthia Allen summarized in a Fort Worth Star Telegram op-ed:  “According to CCFW, participants in the Padua Pilot on average increased their liquid assets by over $5,000, reduced their debt by over $2,000, and experienced a 23% increase in full-time employment. In two years time, 73% of those who entered the program not housed were stably housed and working toward self-sufficiency, and those who came into case management stably housed had a 36% in full-time work and a 34% increase in monthly earnings.”

Additionally, Notre Dame’s RCT found real improvements in self-sufficiency and labor market outcomes for Padua participants:

• 25% more likely to have full-time employment than the control group.
• Monthly earnings were 18% higher after 2 years, compared with the control group.
• 43% of participants reported improved health after two years.

When Catholic Charities Fort Worth began the Padua Project, the organization’s leadership set a goal of helping 10,000 families get out of poverty in 10 years. They have currently assisted 5,700 families out of poverty and they have done so in an academically rigorous, quantifiable way which allows their program to be replicated, scaled, and improved upon. Due to this approach, the Padua Project is not only helping local families every day in Texas, but they are also providing a successful template for others to follow in their communities.

In a 2021 policy panel hosted by Notre Dame and the American Idea Foundation, Dr. Jim Sullivan spoke to the importance scaling successful solutions that are rooted in data and evidence, saying in part:

“The way you get the policy at a national level is to build the evidence at the local level. If we can demonstrate that it can work with Catholic Charities, is it because Catholic Charities Fort Worth is so good [or] can we replicate it? If we can replicate the Padua Project in a lot of the community providers in Dallas, then let’s spread it to other cities and let’s apply it in other contexts, like for prisoner re-entry or for refugee services. This comprehensive case management model works and as you build the evidence, it becomes more and more compelling.”  

During a 2019 visit to Catholic Charities while he was Speaker of the House, Ryan summed up the Padua Project’s impact succinctly, saying in part: “Organizations like Catholic Charities are doing heroic work in our communities to fight poverty. This is among the keys to breaking the cycle and getting more people into good-paying jobs…. The case management system is the best possible system. It’s individual, it’s focused, it’s customized.”

Because of their impact and because of the strong base of evidence in support of their “Padua Project,” the American Idea Foundation has awarded a 2025 grant to Catholic Charities of Fort Worth so they can scale, replicate, and study their program’s effectiveness in other U.S. cities.

The American Idea Foundation is proud to work with Catholic Charities Fort Worth, Franchise for Good, and Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities as they expand the Padua Project into other communities that are struggling with persistent and multi-generational poverty. Because of their fidelity to evidence and their proven model, Speaker Ryan wholeheartedly believes the transformative results seen in Texas will be found in other areas where the Padua Project expands.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here. 

By: AIF Staff

Aspen, CO – Earlier this week, as part of the Aspen Institute’s Economic Study Group, former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan participated in a panel discussion with Professor Jason Furman of Harvard University and Professor Melissa Kearney of Notre Dame entitled: Advancing America’s Prosperity.

The conversation touched on a variety of topics: the One, Big Beautiful Bill and its impact on the American economy in the short-term; the Trump Administration’s “America First” economic policy agenda; long-term fiscal challenges; and how public and private sector leaders can help America maintain its strategic edge on Artificial Intelligence, geopolitics, and economic competitiveness.

Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks, edited lightly for clarity, follow. Video of the discussion is accessible here.

On the pro-growth aspects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act:

“Generally speaking, I think they got the bill right…. The good stuff, in my opinion, are the expensing provisions and the stuff that is really good pro-growth policy.

They made Section-199 permanent, which is very important for medium and small size businesses. They made full-expensing permanent, which is very good growth policy. This means that companies can write off their investments in plant and equipment in the year in which it takes place, that’s very good for productivity which leads to higher living standards. And they made the rates permanent, which reduces uncertainty.

They put other stuff in there that I wouldn’t have done, but they were more campaign promises… then they put some spending in this bill. It is spending that I think is good, but I would have preferred to put that in the regular course of the budget. The thing that Trump could never get in his first term was a full year of funding for his wall. He has got that in this…

All in all, there is a lot of good stuff, but there are things that could have done better. In my opinion, I would have had more entitlement savings to have a bigger debt reduction number coming out of this bill.”

On macroeconomics and trade policy:

“I had the distinct honor of teaching my three kids how to drive, something my wife delegated to me. All three of them started driving with two feet: One on the brake and one on the gas. We are driving the economy with two feet right now.

On the gas, we have good supply-side tax cuts and certainty. We have an unfolding regulatory relief that will unlock a lot of economic activity, but on the brake, we have these tariffs and a possible debt crisis around the corner after interest rates get cut.

On the tariffs, building on what Jason said, I would add to that [they are causing] a lot of uncertainty. What tariffs do is they raise prices on consumers, they raise prices on inputs for producers, and that lowers productivity and that means living standards go down.

I will concede – and I’ve never been a tariff guy – that the politics are pretty good. It is good, populist politics. I will concede that… but in the long-run, I think it is pretty easy to say this is not good for living standards, it’s not good for productivity, and what you end up doing is propping up American businesses and making them less competitive globally. I don’t think that is the smart way to go.”

**

“The St. Louis Federal Reserve did a study on the steel industry. It’s a very protected industry. President Trump has done these massive Section 232 tariffs on steel. For every 1,000 jobs that were saved in the steel industry, we lost 75,000 jobs in steel-consuming industries in America. For one job saved, 75 were lost, but they were spread around the country.

So, you can point to the steel-worker jobs that you saved, but it’s much harder to point to the dispersed damage that is done to the economy you. In the short-run, you can point to the victories politically and you can use populist rhetoric. In the long-run, it’s corrosive to our economic well-being, living standards and competitiveness.”

On utilizing evidence in fighting poverty:

“I really believe we can move the needle on poverty-fighting by getting out of these ideological, partisan fights that we have been in for 30 years and go to what works by using evidence and the field of economics….

We are making a difference in the War on Poverty. There is a bipartisan solution to solving poverty problems with all of this economic data and evidence that we are accruing. I wrote this bill with Patty Murray, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, so there’s nothing partisan about this. It is: Do what works and measure your success based on outcomes, not on inputs, and I think we’re making good progress on that.”

On immigration and addressing labor force needs:

“I think President Biden really screwed up and messed up the border. It’s probably the greatest reason why President Trump was elected. And so, I think it goes without saying that having a secure border is in our national interest. So, let’s put that particular issue aside.

This is a big fight in my party as well and the question is: If you let in immigrants who are lower-skilled, are you going to depress people’s wages?

This is the key political debate. I would argue, with today’s technology, you can have visas and guest-worker programs designed in such a way that you can hopefully guarantee that you are not depressing a person’s wages. Because, I have to tell you, the best cheese in the world is made in Wisconsin but we need people to help us out. We don’t have enough people to literally make the cheese and milk the cows, so we need immigrants to help us do that.

Let me put it this way: We had Phil Swagel, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, with us. They do the big, long-term, macroeconomic forecasting and their projection is that the next 30 years of GDP growth will be an average of 1.3%, which is about half the rate of what we grew in the past 30 years, and it’s basically due to one reason: Labor Supply….

With better entitlement and safety net reforms, we can maximize the labor force participation and get every able-bodied person into work. I would argue that was a key feature of the Medicaid proposal in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We need to do that, and even with that, our birthrates are now 1.8% and they need to be 2.4%.

The thing we have going for us in America, unlike Europe and other countries, is we have the best and the brightest and the hardest working who want to come here. We can have smart immigration reform on the legal side: high-skilled, low-skilled, and everything in between, and do it in a way that makes sure that the able-bodied young man who is not working actually works, but even after that, you’re going to still need to people. And if you do this right, you can get us back to 3% trend economic growth.”

On the future of American energy policy:

“I think Chris Wright, the current Secretary of Energy, is dialed in pretty well on a good policy with an all of the above strategy… I think nuclear is extraordinarily important. With the kind of computing power we’re going to need for AI and data centers, the only real, viable source in my opinion is nuclear. We are getting to the point where we can process fission waste, so that’s almost waste free. We have been 20 years away from fusion energy for the last 60 years, but maybe we’re actually 20 years out now. The point being you need a national strategy for that. There’s basic scientific research and the Energy Department does that. Then, you need to clear the regulatory brush.

They just built a nuclear power plant in Atlanta a year ago and that was like the first one built in 30 years. We need to build more of these. They are scalable. The small module nuclear reactors are right around the corner, so personally, I think that’s a far better bet for us than subsidizing renewables and the rest.”