Press Release

By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – In the latest edition of The Catalyst, a quarterly publication produced by the President George W. Bush Institute, American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan discusses the importance of keeping the American Dream alive.

As part of an interview with the Bush Institute, Speaker Ryan details the work being conducted by the American Idea Foundation and elaborates on how policymakers can embrace success solutions being implemented in communities around the country. Ryan also shares his thoughts on how the Biden Administration can successfully work across the aisle on common-sense issues that expand economic opportunity.

Speaker Ryan’s full conversation with The Catalyst is accessible here and some excerpts of the discussion (edited for length and clarity) follow:

How can policymakers ensure America remains the land of opportunity?

“This is basically what I have dedicated my post-Speakership to. My whole foundation is designed on this and the work I do with the American Enterprise Institute and at Notre Dame is all focused on just this topic…. I think there are specific policies and efforts that need to be deployed because right now, there are whole generations of Americans, millions of Americans who just don’t see that the American Dream is there for them today. I think the good news in this story is that it’s right around the corner if we put the right policies and the right efforts in place to get at this.

“I frankly believe we’re on the cusp of some really good breakthroughs in poverty policies and policies designed to ignite upward mobility. If we can accomplish these goals, get these policy achievements, and change these mindsets, I really believe we can reignite this core, glorious idea that the condition of your birth doesn’t determine the outcome of your life. This idea that if you work hard, you can make it. You can you can be the best version of yourself and that the opportunity of the American Dream is alive and well and most importantly, everybody sees that it’s there for them and that they can achieve it.”

Why do public policies focused on expanding opportunity matter?

“What I really believe we can do is scale up solutions to criminal justice and just get ourselves into a virtuous cycle where we’re actually repairing things. I think Opportunity Zones is another area where we are using private capital to flood the zone in the poorest of the poor communities. It’s something that I helped put in the tax reform to revitalize – not residential properties, but revitalize communities. This is another area, and we spent a lot of time at the American Idea Foundation on this, where we can really move the needle on poverty and get capital to capital-starved areas, so that we can create opportunities and upward mobility.

“All of these efforts that we’re just talking about now have one thing in mind behind them: It’s never too late for redemption. There is always hope. And in this country, you can make a great and better life for yourself and you can leave your kids better off than you were. There are too many people who don’t believe that these days, but I really fundamentally believe if we apply ourselves to these policies that are just coming online and do more, we can reignite the American idea so that it’s really bought into…. I see things like this as helping bring us together to revive civil society and get us all focused on making sure that one another does well. And so, that to me is an inspiring movement, that to me is the politics of hope, inclusion, and inspiration. It’s what I’d like to see more of frankly.”

Why is the American Idea Foundation focusing on ideas outside of Washington, DC?

“I think the best thing that can be done is to go and find those diamonds in the rough, those programs out there that are really making a difference, learn from them, and then build, scalable, recordable models that can be replicated.

“Let’s take [an example] in Texas. Let’s take Catholic Charities in Fort Worth. I spent a pretty good deal of time with Catholic Charities Fort Worth. They have, in my mind’s eye, one of the best anti-poverty programs and they have a case-management program called the Padua Project. The Padua Project is a program that this wonderful lady named Heather Reynolds, who now is the Executive Director of Notre Dame’s Lab of Economic Opportunity (LEO), founded. The Padua Project, which is you get a Catholic Charities caseworker who is attached to no more than say 20 families to help them set up a plan to get out of poverty. It takes not just six months or eight months; it takes three or four or five years. They work with them, building a plan that is erected with incentives and disincentives, carrots and sticks, to troubleshoot and activate all the resources that are available, so that each person can work themselves out of poverty and build a better life for themselves….

“We have run a randomized clinical trial (RCT) on Padua and we have concluded it makes an enormous difference. So, setting up this sort of case-management program in the right way, with the proper incentives and controls is something that now we’ve sort of scientifically proven. We built an evidence model. We built procedures and practices. This could be built and rebuilt and replicated across the country and really move the needle on helping get people out of poverty. There’s just one example of something that has nothing to do with Washington, DC or the federal government.

“Catholic Charities has got the secret sauce. They figured out that it can be replicated. We figured out how to replicate it and now what we’re trying to do is amplify this effort. This type of program and these success stories can be seen again and again and each place will customize it a little bit, but there’ll be a base from which to operate from. So, charitable efforts to get people out of poverty aren’t having to go back and reinvent the wheel every time. They can pick up where others left off, and really, produce successes.”

How is the American Idea Foundation working with policymakers to advance pro-growth policies?

“This is the other thing that my foundation is working on, though COVID has presented a little bit of a problem, but I’ve spent a lot of my time touring poor communities around the country. I went with my friend, Bob Woodson, for a couple of years touring the poorest of the poor communities, just on listening tours and holding listening sessions. I’m trying to train other policymakers to do the same. It’s one of the things the American Idea Foundation is working and doing, which is getting people out of the comfort zones and out of their Congressional Districts, going into the poor communities. If you represent a rural area that’s not poor or a suburban area that is wealthy, go to these poor areas, listen, learn, observe, take away and build relationships, friendships, and alliances, and then go make a difference. That’s something that I was able to do and I feel I’ve really benefited from it.”

Why work on fighting poverty and expanding evidence-based policies after leaving Congress?

“It’s some of the most gratifying work that I did when I was in government, I always found myself — and when you’re Speaker of the House, you have to deal with national security and that was actually a big project of mine, but I always found on my discretionary policy time, I found myself going back to this issue. It’s just what really moves me.

“I’m a cradle Catholic, so this is a big part of your upbringing. It’s a big part of Catholic social teaching, so it’s something that I just always believed in and I just found that every time I had a little bit of spare time from managing members to scheduling legislation, this is where I wanted to spend my time. This is the legislation that really helped, that was fulfilling….

“And so, I decided after my speakership that I wanted to go work on making sure these laws were well executed. I want to make sure that these laws stand the test of time and get executed well. We didn’t write the laws as perfectly as I would want to, but that just means there’s more follow-up and more follow through. The American Idea Foundation is basically focused on this topic and in particular, it is focused on executing these laws and making sure that they’re properly designed.”

How can the Biden Administration successfully advance reforms that help the American people?

“They should start on incremental reforms that are confidence-building measures, that are bipartisan in nature, stay between the 40-yard lines and bang out a bunch of reforms. I know [President Biden’s] doing Executive Orders that appease the base. I don’t like those Executive Orders but that’s just what they’re going to do. Especially with impeachment coming down the path, that’s going to inflame the situation and it’s going to make it much more partisan, so stay within the 40-yard lines and bring a bunch of incremental reforms that get bipartisan buy-in.

“I pray to God that they keep the filibuster and my guess is [Republican Leader Mitch McConnell] will be able to get a deal to do that…. but bang out a bunch of incremental, bipartisan reforms as confidence-builders, that show the institutions are strong, that the country can still work, that we can reduce the rhetoric, and just start banging out some compromises and some reforms that fulfill the theme that Joe Biden put out in his inaugural speech. I was sitting not too far away from President Bush. The inaugural speech was pitch perfect, but, you know, words must be followed with actions. So, the actions that should follow the words are bipartisan, incremental reforms.”

How can America move forward, together, during these tough economic times?

“I think the biggest mistake that President Biden could make is using reconciliation to try and rip up the tax code that we just fixed. And look, I understand that progressives who play class warfare would like to do that but they will slow down economic growth. The tax reforms that passed were way overdue. They made us internationally competitive. They kept jobs here at home. They created more investment, but most importantly, the kind of an economy that these tax reforms created was the fastest wage growth among the lowest income-earners in the country.

“[President] Joe Biden will be able to get a nice recovery out of this. I think he needs to go easy on the regulatory footprint. I know that he’s going to go after Carbon and I think that’s regrettable but if [President] Joe Biden focuses on confidence-building measures before partisan measures and doesn’t go after the tax code, he will inherit an economy built for growth, particularly coming out of COVID and that will give people jobs. You have a lot of unemployed people, a lot of people in debt. You have to have fast economic growth to get people back into jobs and into the workforce, and to get wage growth, the policies are there, [President Biden] just needs to allow it to happen.”

By: AIF STAFF

Salt Lake City, UT – Earlier this month, Speaker Paul Ryan visited the Sorenson Impact Center to discuss its ongoing work to use data, public policy, investment, and community engagement to encourage positive social change. The Sorenson Impact Center has been instrumental in identifying and supporting promising developments in Opportunity Zones around the country and, like the American Idea Foundation, believes that evidence-based public policies and community involvement can yield positive outcomes so individuals can achieve their version of the American Dream.

While touring the Center and meeting with its leadership and staff, Speaker Ryan sat down for a conversation with CEO Geoff Davis and students from the University of Utah to discuss his experiences developing public policies rooted in evidence and data.

The full conversation, which primarily focused on the development of Opportunity Zones, effectively fighting poverty, and Social Impact Bonds, is accessible here and some highlights of Ryan’s remarks, (edited lightly for clarity), follow.

A Post-Elected Focus on Fighting Poverty, Scaling Proven Models of Success

“I spent most of my discretionary policymaking time focused on poverty and upper mobility. From my early days as House Budget Chair, as the Ways and Means Chair, and as Speaker, I worked on poverty policies at the macro-policymaking level and at the grassroots-level that focused on reigniting upward mobility, fighting poverty, and addressing root causes of poverty. And that was one of the most enjoyable policy things I ever did.

“When I retired, I wanted to make sure that the recent laws we passed: Opportunity Zones, Social Impact Bonds, and the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, were well executed and I just really enjoyed my time working on poverty issues from what I would call a center-right perspective.

“The American Idea Foundation is my [non-profit] foundation that focuses on these issues. It focuses on research in this area and on executing these laws properly. I [also] teach Economics at Notre Dame and I’m on the Board of the Laboratory for Economic Opportunity at Notre Dame. I work with Notre Dame economists at LEO, along with my foundation, to really push these ideas out and get them into the mainstream and out of the periphery. The American Idea Foundation is focused on attacking poverty, highlighting new poverty solutions, and helping scale these ideas and deploy these successful ideas and models nationwide.”

Ensuring Community Development, not just Profit, is a Goal for Opportunity Zone Investors:

“I think the Left would like nothing more — and I don’t mean to be partisan but I think there’s an ideological issue here, but there’s nothing more than they would like to say than: “This is just a tax abuse shelter. Let’s get rid of the idea.” I really believe more transparency and reporting gets you more accountability. And again, that’s a part that we wanted to have in law but we couldn’t because of something called the Byrd rule.

“This is why we’re working on some accountability tools to rate and measure opportunity zones, so that they mind the mission. The mission here in Opportunity Zones, from the person who put it in the tax code, is not to identify communities and push the poor out. It is to revitalize communities. It is to bring jobs. It is to bring solutions. It is to re-integrate civil society so that the people in these blighted neighborhoods or communities in both rural and inner-city America are actually rising out of poverty. And so, we want to make sure that the funds and the Opportunity Zones themselves understand the totality of the mission. We want people to make money. We want people to invest, but we also want them to understand the reason this law exists in the first place. In my opinion, transparency and reporting brings you more accountability about the best zones to invest in that are worth copying and replicating.”

Infusing New Ideas and Solutions into Poverty-Fighting Efforts

“Just like we’ve seen wonderful disruption in the technology space that has brought amazing innovations, new technologies and brought people closer together, I believe we can do the same in the poverty space. And so, I think the challenge for social impact bonds and the challenge for the poverty space is that we are disrupting a government monopoly of fighting poverty, and that [monopoly] is sort of wedded to the status quo. My friend Bob Woodson calls it the “poverty industrial complex,” which is that they’ve been doing the same thing for so long and it’s been funded, but unfortunately, it’s not producing the kinds of results that we need.

“We should be disrupting the poverty-solution space with the kind of private sector disruptions that have made technology and other aspects so lean, so efficient, so effective, and that needs to be brought to the poverty space. But you’re going to be facing a bureaucracy and entrenched interests. You’re being disruptive to the status quo and so, that just takes a lot of perseverance. It takes people coming together, and, frankly, [it takes] the private sector with private money and with solutions, disrupting this space.

“As a Catholic, I know most of you are LDS at Utah, but we call it “subsidiarity” as a Catholic. It’s a principle that basically believes, bringing people together with their various talents and skills, locally. Those closest to this problem bring the best solution. And so, this sense of civil society, where people are working together to solve problems gets you the best outcome. [It’s better] than phoning it in and having some big, macro, Washington, one size fits all approach.”

Changing Our Poverty Fighting Mindset to Focus on Results:

“The entire premise of the War on Poverty from the government’s point of view was focusing on efforts and focusing on inputs: How much money are we spending, how many programs are recreating, how much bureaucracy are we building and that was sort of the measurement of success.

“The whole philosophy behind the Sorenson Impact Center, as I understand it, and behind the American Idea Foundation is focusing on results, [focusing on] what achieves the goals of reigniting upward mobility, attacking the root causes of poverty, and getting people out of poverty. By disrupting all of this so it is focused not on inputs and not on effort, but on outcomes and results, our entire attitude and the way we approach these problems has to change. That is disruptive and that changes the status quo, for the better in my opinion but nevertheless, it is always challenging when you’re changing a generation-long status quo.

“Data driven measurable results… does de-emphasize government. The way I look at this is [the federal] government shouldn’t be manning the frontlines of the War on Poverty. It should be on the supply lines to bring resources like money and other things, but the people in the communities on the ground, learning from one another by using time-tested principles and processes are the ones who actually should actually man the frontlines of the War on Poverty and create the solutions. And that is a different kind of thinking from the government-centric approach.”

Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic with Impactful Policies; Rethinking Civil Society’s Role:

“I think, obviously, the need is even greater because we have spiking poverty, higher unemployment, and a great need. The way I look at [social] impact bonds is it brings the best of both worlds. It brings the idea of a social public good, getting people out of poverty, and fighting unique poverty problems with private sector know-how and private sector capital.

“One of the concerns I’ve always had, and I’ve mentioned this for years, is that in 1965 when the War on Poverty was launched, there was this great, magnificent effort, and it was incredibly well intended, to have government tackle the issue of poverty. It was a really, well-intended, noble exercise.

“The downside consequence of this, in my opinion, was it pushed the private sector out of the poverty space and said, “This is government’s space.” It told the rank-and-file taxpayer, the person driving down around the suburbs to the city and driving by the projects and the blighted areas, “Don’t worry about that, that’s the government’s job. Just pay your taxes and government will fix this.” And so, we ended up marginalizing the poor. We ended up displacing the poor and not integrating the poor in our communities and our solutions….

“We need to break this notion that poverty is not your problem as a citizen. It is your problem. It is your issue. And so, let’s get off this idea that this is just government and only government’s [problem]. The private sector needs to be involved. The private sector has so much talent and know-how that can really disrupt stale institutions that aren’t producing results, which were well intended, but resulted in a sort of misguided approach to fighting poverty.”

Evidence & Data as a Way to Bridge Ideological Divides:

“I’ve seen many instances in public policy debates where if you are equipped with unassailable data and evidence, people put the boxing gloves down. They put these sharp edges of ideology down and you can have a really nice, centrist-based conversation about what works and what doesn’t. MIECHV is a perfect example. It’s a long acronym but it’s basically nurses going into homes of poor moms on a pre-natal basis and helping them get prepared from motherhood, or having an infant. [It focuses on] health and welfare.

“It was rigorously designed by the Bush administration with an evidence-based reporting focus. President Bush created it. President Obama extended it and President Trump reauthorized it because this law, which basically was about getting nurses into poor communities, had such good evidence that Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump have supported this law and now it’s being deployed nationwide.”

Taking Opportunity Zones from an Idea to the Real World, Ensuring the Mission is Minded:

“Opportunity Zones are something that, frankly, I’ve worked on for over 20 years. I worked for Jack Kemp back in the early 1990’s working on what were then called “enterprise zones.” And so, to see that idea come to fruition, and we made sure that this was in the tax reform legislation as [we did] with social impact bonds these are things that we’ve been working on for many years. I saw, as Speaker of the House, the ability to put them into tax reform legislation because it’s something that I’d always want to see happen but we never had the ability to line up the political powers that be to get this done.

“What is exciting with Opportunity Zones is the amount of capital that has been deployed. The amount of capital that has been deployed to solve poverty problems and is being deployed in this space…. We always had an idea of having what I would call it sort of “reporting guardrails” to accompany the legislation to bring a lot of transparency to Opportunity Zones and to impact bonds, so with that transparency, you can learn as you go and you can have more accountability. We could not put that in the legislation because of the Senate rules, so that is an area where I think there’s room for improvement, which was always the intent.

“As a result, I think that’s one of the things that foundations [can do] and it’s one of the things that I work on at my Foundation. We can help take that place to bring accountability and transparency and to make sure that the mission is minded in the proper way as we always anticipated.”

###

By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – Last week, former Speaker of the House and President of the American Idea Foundation, Paul Ryan talked with Tom Donilon, Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute and former Obama Administration National Security Advisor, as part of the 2020 BlackRock Future Forum. In a panel discussion entitled: “Governing and Policy in 2020 and Beyond,” the two conversed about a number of pressing policy topics including how to expand economic opportunities following the COVID-19 pandemic, how to address the national debt in a bipartisan way, and how to reduce polarization through more robust civil discourse.  

Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s comments, which have been slightly edited for clarity, follow.

On Addressing Systemic Racism and Economic Inequities:

“First, I think of the George Floyd murder, and I use that word carefully, I think it opened a lot of eyes in America. I think a lot of scales fell from people’s eyes and I think that they saw this needs to be looked at in a way that opens the hearts and minds of people who have never thought of these things before, so that we really can empathize with minorities who did and who do face systemic discrimination. This, first of all, needs to be acknowledged and then something’s got to be done about it.

“I do believe that leading with the [right] kind of tone and the [right] words matters. “Black Lives Matter” are true words. No one should be worried about saying that these words are true and then, we can have hopefully an honest and reasonable debate about what to do about it.

“Should we defund the police? No, I don’t think we should defund the police, but should we work on making equality of opportunity policies more in reach for other people? Yes. Look, I have gone through the opportunity zone legislation, I authored the criminal justice reform bill, and I think there are a lot of things like that that can be done to speak to the concerns of people who feel like the American Dream is just not there for them,  that they’ve been excluded from it.

“I really believe that this moment is a moment that calls for empathy, understanding, listening, and then innovative policies because people’s minds really are open to these problems and addressing these injustices that are baked into the system, that have been part and parcel of the American system, that a lot of people see. I really do think we can go after the root causes.

“One of the things I work on at Notre Dame and at the American Idea Foundation is trying to go at the root causes of poverty, the root cause of the lack of economic mobility. There are so many things I think we can do as a country, on a bipartisan basis, to address these inconsistencies and these inequities.”

On the Federal Government’s Response to COVID-19:

“On the economic front, I think [it] was a pretty impressive response. Frankly, globally speaking, you saw central banks around the world pumping liquidity into the system and I do think that the cooperation by my former colleagues in Congress with what we call “Phase 1” through “Phase 3.5” was really pretty impressive…. You had a very impressive economic response and I think that really helped bolster the economy and brought the bottom up from where it would otherwise have been. As a result, whether it is the Congressional Budget Office or the Federal Reserve, they are forecasting some pretty positive economic growth in Q3.

“The health response, I think, is a little more mixed. You have federalism here in America, so you’re going to have different responses and some states did better than others. Densely populated areas obviously fared worse than other [areas] but I think all along, we did not [yet] overwhelm our healthcare system and we did not have the overcrowding in our health care system that we feared.

“What I regret in all of this is how COVID-19 has become kind of partisan, how the necessary social distancing and the protocols that we need to operate in society have unfortunately become partisan, and I worry about that as the summer continues and as the fall resumes before we actually have a vaccine.”

On Reforming & Strengthening Social Safety Programs:

“My biggest concern, under whomever becomes president, is fiscal policy and our entitlements, which are unsustainable. They’re on an unsustainable path. It’s not too late to fix them on our own, in a way that fulfills each of their missions, but if we keep kicking the can down the road as both presidents and both parties have done, then I really do worry that our monetary policy and our fiscal policy are on a collision course with one another. And the next president is going to have to deal with that.”

On Reducing Polarization & Encouraging Discourse:

“I did 20 years in Congress from 1998 until 2019 and in that arc of time, I saw an enormous transformation of our politics and it coincided obviously with the internet, digital, data, and the rest. And in the old days, like 10 years ago, the way you measured success in politics was really what I would call a “meritocracy,” where success was measured by persuasion and legislation. [Success was measured] by could you create innovative policies that solve the problems of the day and persuade people: your constituents, your colleagues, and the country, with the way to go and that was sort of how you measured success in politics.

“In this day and age, I think success in politics is measured more on the right and the left right by provocation so we now have what I would call, in both parties frankly, the “entertainment wings” of our parties, where people look at this as why do the long slog of spending 10 and 20 years in Congress, proving yourself through a meritocracy, when you can leapfrog that entire meritocracy if you are good on Twitter, on Facebook, on digital, and if you can really be entertaining on cable television, you can immediately leapfrog that entire meritocracy and become a national player overnight. I can think of episodes on both sides of the aisle where people did that but what that does require though is fragmentation and polarization.

“And so, you get to the point where a lot of people are looking over their right shoulder if they’re a Republican or if they’re a Democrat, they’re looking over their left shoulder worried about a primary. And so, they’re focused on staying in their partisan lane and entertaining, so my worry is we now have entertainment politics, which is really by design extremely partisan. You can monetize it, you have whole websites, you have whole entertainment venues that make money off of this polarization, so what is the antidote to that?

“What do I tell students at Notre Dame as you run into this problem? You have to get more involved, not impugn people’s motives, don’t question their character, understand where they’re coming from, and have a civil debate. I think the best alternative and the best antidote to this is to do everything we can to revitalize civil society, that space between ourselves and our government, where we occupy our lives and where we put the phone and TV down and go actually interact with other people, and get out of your comfort zone and spend time with people who are not like you or who don’t think like you, who don’t look like you, and don’t live near where you live. To me, the more you can get society to integrate itself through a civil society is the best way to try and heal our politics so that we can have common ground, so that we can have a politics of mutual understanding and room for a civil debate.”

###