Press Release

By: AIF Staff

Houston, TX – Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan joined Ambassador David Satterfield at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy for a wide-ranging conversation on the economic, fiscal, and geopolitical forces shaping the United States.

Talking with over 300 members of the Rice University student body and broader campus community, Ryan offered his perspectives on foreign policy, the challenges of sustaining economic growth amid rising debt and international competition, trade, the RISE Pilot project and efforts to reform the social safety net, and Artificial Intelligence. The conversation also explored the rise of populism, combatting polarization, and the policy choices facing the next Congress as leaders navigate an increasingly complex domestic and global environment.

Video of the full Baker Institute event is accessible here and a recap of the event from Rice University is accessible here. Excerpts of Ryan’s responses, edited for clarity, follow.

The current state of the American economy

“The economy has had a lot thrown at it and it’s remarkably durable right now… I think it’s being levitated a lot by our data center build-out. You’ve got the hyperscalers putting about a trillion dollars into data centers…

But the big question you’re asking is, are we heading into a debt crisis? What’s our fiscal situation look like?… And the answer is we don’t have the fiscal space. We’re running big deficits, 6% of GDP, in a time of low unemployment and decent economic growth.”

With Putin deal, Trump ‘practicing foreign policy with no morality’

“What’s running through my mind with this Putin diesel deal is we are now practicing foreign policy with no morality. This is what’s happening right now…

It’s hard to wrap your head around this Putin diesel deal and see it as anything other than a rejection of the things that this country has stood for 250 years. We’re for freedom. We’re for liberty. We’re for democracy… It’s kind of like we’re going from, you know, the shining city on the hill to might makes right and the victor gets the spoils.”

The failure and fatigue of grievance-based populism

“Both parties are going to the voter with grievance-based populism, which means they are playing identity politics. They are playing to people’s anxieties and concerns and fears. They’re exploiting them. They offer overly simplified solutions to those problems that don’t actually solve the problem… What happens with this kind of populism… is it doesn’t bring the goods. It doesn’t solve the problems… The country is going to be so fatigued from bitter partisanship, from the pendulum swinging and reactionary moment after reactionary moment and eventually, they will think… I’m going to go with somebody that’s actually a proven fixer.”

The 20th century social contract vs. 21st century demographics

“We have settled on a consensus in this country that we believe in our social contract… The problem with this is these programs were written in the 20th century in ways that are totally unsustainable in the 21st century. They’re demographically driven. They’re pay-as-you-go…

We just doubled the amount of retirees in this country within one generation. With the boomers retiring, we went from 40 million retirees to 77 million retirees and have fewer workers following in their footsteps.”

Addressing the upcoming Social Security cliff

“Knowing what to do is not the problem. Knowing how to do it is not the problem. Having serious politics to get to these solutions is the problem…

I do still believe you can date stamp any Social Security reforms. You can grandfather the existing retirees to prevent them from having any changes in their lives… so long as we pass laws that affect Gen X, my generation on down, say from age 60 and below, so that when we retire, we are going into a system that’s designed a bit differently so that it can cash flow, so that it can be solvent… You have to means-test the benefits more… You have to raise the retirement age to reflect longevity.”

Taxing our way out of a debt crisis is mathematically impossible

“I think you can get more revenue in the federal government without sacrificing economic growth, but you do that through tax reform. You don’t do that through bad tax policies that actually slow down economic growth… There’s no way—it’s a mathematical impossibility that you can solve this through taxes. You simply cannot. The math doesn’t add up. So if you think you can just tax your way out of this problem, it is mathematically impossible.”

The risk of losing reserve currency primacy

“The challenge we will have in the future is if the world ends up concluding that we’re not going to get our act together, that we’re not going to pay our bills, that we’re going to monetize our debt and going to just print money to pay off our debt, that’s when the worm turns on us. It’s at that point when we could lose our primacy as the world’s reserve currency, which is an exorbitant privilege, an enormous benefit to our country.”

Trade as a positive-sum game vs. protectionism

“When Trump picked a fight with every single country, he basically embraced the view that trade is a zero-sum game with nothing but a winner or a loser… I totally disagree with that worldview. Trade is a positive-sum game. That’s how life and economics work. There are win-win situations…

But what Liberation Day did was it isolated our allies and pushed more of our allies to China…But not only that, it’s also really bad economics. It’s bad economics because you make our own industries less healthy and you crank up prices on your consumers.”

The fight between tyranny and democracy will define the 21^st century

“There’s going to be a fight in the 21st century for other countries in between tyranny and democracy. China is going to run around the world with tyranny in a box saying: ‘Here’s your smart surveillance system for your streets… Here is your monetary system with the digital RMB so you can surveil your citizens and their and their spending habits and their money. Here is tyranny in a box…’ America can lead the world in saying here’s what freedom looks like. Here’s what privacy looks like. Here’s what liberty looks like.”

By: AIF Staff

Janesville, WI – Earlier this week, former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation (AIF) President Paul Ryan informed leaders of a half-dozen non-profits around the United States that their organizations were selected to receive grant funding and strategic support from AIF in the year ahead. Each of these groups was chosen because of their exemplary work to spur upward mobility and fight poverty in an evidence-based way.

Ryan, who co-authored the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, has long advocated for the federal government to deepen its use of empirical studies and data when evaluating how best to assist Americans who are in-need.

Since 2022, the American Idea Foundation has issued millions of dollars in grants to non-profit groups deepening their use of evidence to address problems like recidivism, addiction, early childhood health, job training, and homelessness. Throughout the year, Ryan and his Foundation will visit these organizations, offer policy expertise, and partner with them in furtherance of their work.

In announcing the American Idea Foundation’s 2026 grant recipients, Ryan said: 

“This Spring, I spent a day touring 7th and 8th grade math classes with philanthropists, representatives from Governor Wes Moore’s office, and leaders from the Charles County School District to better understand how ASSISTments, an innovative education platform combining technology and data to improve mathematics comprehension, is helping students.

It was inspiring to see not only leaders from the public and private sector align around a data-driven intervention, but also the positive impact ASSISTments is having on test scores, teacher satisfaction, and students’ desire to learn. ASSISTments’ partnership with the State of Maryland and philanthropic groups like the American Idea Foundation shows how we can unite around evidence-based solutions to improve the lives of our fellow citizens. It is a template that other school districts and governments can, and should, follow.

Our 2026 grant recipients are equally inspiring. They are at the forefront of advancing truly innovative strategies to fight poverty and promote upward mobility. The 2026 recipients include groups with whom I’ve worked for years, like Catholic Charities of Fort Worth and Bernie’s Book Bank, as well as new organizations like Kidz2Leaders and 100 Families. All these groups are united in their desire to save lives and improve our communities, and I could not be more excited to support their work in the year ahead.”

The 2026 American Idea Foundation grant recipients are….

– 100 Families – Restore Hope                                                                        – Bernie’s Book Bank

– Catholic Charities of Fort Worth                                                                 – Corner to Corner

– Kidz2Leaders                                                                                                – Little Scandinavia  

Started by Ryan in late 2019, the American Idea Foundation believes by taking the politics out of poverty-fighting and focusing on outcomes and results, successful programs can be scaled, elevated, and replicated. The Foundation believes this approach of prioritizing what works and validating these interventions with evidence  will provide policymakers with a better blueprint to address the challenges facing individuals and communities across the United States.

Past recipients of grant funding from the American Idea Foundation include:

ACE-CUNY, ASSISTments, Bernie’s Book Bank,  Bottom Line, Brigid’s Path, Care Portal, Catholic Charities of Fort Worth, Child First, College Possible, Corner to Corner, Downtown Boxing Gym, Family Promise of West Michigan, Family Promise of Wisconsin, Found Village, Friends of the Children, Future Forward, Gatekeepers, I.C.Stars, The Joseph Project, Merit America, NPower,  Per Scholas, Safe Families for Children, , Saga Education, Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, Wisconsin Inmate Education Association, and the Women’s Bean Project.

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By: AIF Staff

Janesville, WI – Former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan recently sat down with Kate Odell, host of the Wall Street Journal’s Potomac Watch podcast, to discuss efforts to reform America’s social safety net through a state-led pilot project called the RISE Pilots. The in-depth conversation focused on using 21st-century technology to eliminate systemic “benefit cliffs” that penalize upward mobility and trap families in poverty. Speaker Ryan also detailed the role of individualized case management and contrasted his data-driven RISE program with the structural deficiencies of Universal Basic Income (UBI) models.

The podcast followed a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Ryan and Les Ford, entitled “Americans are getting caught in the Safety Net,” and a corresponding white paper, detailing the RISE (Resources for Independence, Stability, and Employment) Pilot Programs

Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s responses from the interview follow and the entire podcast is accessible here

The Moral High Ground of Work-Based Welfare

“Look, I think we occupy the moral high ground because helping people live the best versions of their lives, maximizing their potential in life, and getting up and out of poverty—that’s the moral high ground, and I think that’s what we occupy with these kinds of ideas…. The data is really clear: The best way to help people get out of poverty is work.”

How “Benefit Cliffs” Trap Families in Poverty

“The basic point on benefit cliffs is that a person who is in poverty will have a list of benefits. Those benefits will all have cutoff levels at varying degrees because there is a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach across the country. If they seek an opportunity or get presented with an opportunity—a new job, a pay raise, or maybe a single mom doing DoorDash as a side hustle while her kids are at school—and they make that extra money, it triggers a reduction or an elimination of their benefits. Because of these benefit cliffs, they end up losing more in benefits than they gain in income. So, they stay trapped in poverty.”

Universal Basic Income Perpetuates a Cycle of Poverty

“If you do universal basic income, you’re just throwing another program on top and creating a much steeper benefit cliff. You’re basically saying to people, “Don’t work, stay where you are. We’ll just give you money so you can stick in your current condition of life.”

I think it’s the most insidious idea. I think it’s going to absolutely reduce people’s ability to get out of poverty, and it will take people out of the workforce, which will slow down economic growth. So, not only will it reduce labor force participation rates and slow down people’s participation in the economy, but it will also segregate the poor from the rest of society and keep them where they are.

It’s the worst thing you could possibly do if you believe in upward mobility, if you believe in individuals rising out of poverty, living lives of independence, and shaping their destiny however they want to in their own pursuit of happiness. That’s what we want to do when we’re talking about fighting poverty.

What RISE accounts do is use technology to make the welfare reform condition-based. Food stamp money goes for food, housing assistance goes for housing, and heating goes for heating. If you work, you get this. If you don’t work, you don’t get this. You can conditionalize and program the money to perform as intended. You combine the benefits so it’s easy to figure out, which is really good for getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse at various government agencies.

Most importantly, you gradually phase down the benefit as a person earns more money so that they are always better off when they earn more money. They will always make more than 50 cents on the dollar with that additional income that comes with that additional opportunity. There is always an incentive to make more, earn more, and grow yourself out of poverty. That’s the beauty of these RISE accounts.”

The Punitive Marginal Tax Rate on Upward Mobility

“In our op-ed, we show a hypothetical person in Washington, D.C. For that person who’s making $11,000, in order to overcome that benefit cliff, they’d have to make $65,000, because the loss in benefits would exceed the income gained by any incremental opportunity. That is a massive tax on upward mobility. In economic speak, it’s a massive marginal tax rate against upward mobility, so it traps people in poverty where they are. If you do universal basic income, you’re just throwing another program on top and creating a much steeper benefit cliff.”

Leveraging Blockchain and Digital Wallets for Conditional Aid

“We’re working with a company called Digital Asset that runs a Canton protocol. Canton is a blockchain Layer 1 privacy network, which basically is another way of saying you can have all of these benefits distributed and combined in one benefit stack—one digital wallet with all the various protocols that manage the conditionality of the welfare. If you have an Earned Income Tax Credit and you get that because you work, you can have it embedded in the person’s paycheck versus a lump sum at the end of the year. If you have SNAP benefits, which are food stamps, the money performs only if it’s spent on food, and so on. You can combine these benefits and then phase down those benefit cliffs so that the person always makes more money as they earn more income.”

Breaking the Cycle of Intergenerational Poverty

“When parents don’t work, they are not passing on the attributes of work to their children. What does work get a person? It gets them a life of dignity, meaning, and purpose. They have better health outcomes, both psychological and physical. They obviously have better economic income outcomes, and they have better life expectancies. It is really clear that working makes a person better off, makes them more fulfilled, and gives them better lives. That is quantifiable. But the example that is set for the children is just as important. Making sure that you can, in my opinion, break the cycle of intergenerational poverty—which is the toughest, most difficult form of poverty to go after—is what I focus on in my foundation.”

Utilizing Case Management and Federalism in the States

“I’m a huge believer in case management. My foundation spends a lot of time in this area. The randomized control trials that have been run on case management are very, very good. It’s being scaled around the country. A lot of different groups do case management: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, Salvation Army, and governments do it.

What case management is, is you have a poverty navigator. A family would be attached to a case manager. Think of it like a social worker—a person that is knowledgeable about all the various benefits that are there for their eligibility and who can help them build a plan to get them up and out of poverty…. What case management really does is act as a massive accelerant to helping a person get up and out of poverty. Having that person help you do that is critical for all welfare reform ideas out there, but particularly if you’re onboarding a new technology…”

“What a state can do is they can get waivers from the federal government, and this particular federal government is very pro-waiver, but they can also use their TANF money. TANF is a pot of money that states have from the old 1996 welfare reform, which has a lot of discretionary money to do things like this—to do pilots. So, they already have federal money in accounts right now in the states that they can use to fund these RISE pilots, and they can get other waiver dollars in addition to it. The money is there to do these pilots.

The question basically is: is today’s governor… satisfied with the condition of the poor in their state, or do they want to try a new idea based upon long-standing principles and great economic evidence with new technology to build a system to get their citizens out of poverty? … If there’s a governor that wants to do that, then there are pilot projects on the shelf ready for them to use.”