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On You Might be Right podcast, Ryan discusses fiscal policy & strengthening the social safety net with Tennessee Govs. Bredesen and Haslam

On You Might be Right podcast, Ryan discusses fiscal policy & strengthening the social safety net with Tennessee Govs. Bredesen and Haslam

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By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – Last month, former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen and former Republican Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee recently launched a podcast called, You Might be Right, featuring guests from the left and the right presenting their views on major issues facing the nation. The Tennessee Governors, who launched the podcast in conjunction with the University of Tennessee’s Howard Baker Center for Public Policy, are focused on finding common ground, listening to various perspectives, and arriving at potential policy solutions through conversations with experts.

Paul Ryan, the President of the American Idea Foundation and former Speaker of the House, was one of the first guests on You Might be Right, joining Governors Haslam and Bredesen for a discussion on our nation’s fiscal policy.

During the interview, Ryan detailed his experience advancing proposals to balance the budget and strengthen programs like Medicare and Social Security so they are on sounder financial footing.  He also talked about why our nation needs to solve the debt crisis in order to maintain a social safety net for current and future generations of Americans.

Listen to the full podcast interview with Speaker Ryan here.Excerpts of Ryan’s responses follow.

Ryan on why the national debt should be everyone’s concern

“It matters because in 10 to 20 years, around mid-century, we will not be able to afford our social contract. If we think that America is polarized today, just wait for if and when we lose our reserve currency status.

We can’t afford to bond finance our social contract, which is health and retirement security for all Americans, a safety net for the poor, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. We won’t be able to afford those things. [In a debt crisis,] we would have to cut those benefits in real time for real people who have organized their lives around them and who are living on these programs – just think of the chaos if that were to occur. It will make today’s polarization look like nothing.

My mother-in-law passed away 10 years ago, but she used to always say this thing that stuck with me: “A stitch in time saves nine.” This is one of those issues where if you get it right early enough, you can dodge a debt crisis. You could dodge that bullet and our country can keep its promises to its people, which is health and retirement security and the social safety net.

[On our current course,] we won’t be able to keep that promise. We have so many unfunded liabilities and the government is making promises to what I call the “three generation window” of retirees, workers, and their kids and these are promises that can’t be kept. So, we need to reform these programs so that we can make sure we keep these promises. It’s that simple in my mind.”

Ryan on reforming entitlements by keeping promises to current retirees & making prospective reforms for future seniors

“The question is: Can you put in place reforms today that apply to people before they retire with important changes to these programs so they still meet their missions quite well?…

Like I said, I passed these bills in the House as budget resolutions, but we never got close to getting them actually into law, which involves the Senate and the President of course. But the way I went about [generating support for these bills] is by educating Members of Congress and having Members of Congress go to their constituents and have town-hall meetings to talk about this problem, to talk about why it’s bad, and why fixing it early is the way to go. And [talk about] that these reforms we are proposing, they make the programs stronger, better off, and don’t affect people in or near retirement.

This is kind of the key political promise: Not affecting people in or near retirement, because they’re just about to retire. They have made these promises and they banked on [receiving the benefits] sooner or later. We’re not going to be able to make good on those promises [for much longer] and that’s why I worry we don’t have a whole lot of time for where we can still say something that makes this politically viable, which is it’s not going to impact current retirees. It’s going to be prospective. We’re getting pretty close to the time where we may not be able to do that and then it gets really difficult.”

Ryan on how health and retirement security programs can be improved

“We can make these programs actually work better and pass these reforms so they’re phased in over time, so they’re gradual and expected, so they’re not too disruptive to people in their lives. There’s one thing – and this is where I’m going to sound like a Republican ideologue, but if we do this, it will be because Congress and the country accepts the private sector being involved in delivering these services, so they are publicly-financed, publicly-managed but with a private sector delivery system.

And honestly, it’s not really Social Security. In this case, it’s Medicare. It’s the healthcare entitlements. It’s the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and Medicare. That’s the game in town. That’s a debt crisis.

And so, we need a patient-centered health care system with private sector delivery systems that have value-based purchasing, true transparency on value, and an economic incentive for patients to act on that value. This helps tame health inflation and bend the cost curve.

And frankly, Medicare is really the big enchilada. I think the only way to go is a premium support system, and a premium support system like the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program. It’s sort of a defined contribution to a person for their premiums in a guaranteed-issue Medicare system. It provides more for the poor and the sick, less for the healthy and the wealthy. You means-test it, you risk-adjust it, but it’s fixed. According to the Congressional Budget Office, according to all the best budget projections, it’s really the only way to save Medicare from bankruptcy without resorting to rationing and price controls.”

Ryan on how policymakers can solve the debt problem

“This was always my theory: You have to have people run for office talking about this issue, educating people about this issue, and then offering a solution to this issue. So if they win that office, they then have earned the moral authority or the right to put these reforms into place.

When I became Speaker in 2015, I wasn’t looking for the job. Actually, I was kind of drafted into it. One of my conditions for doing this job, and it’s a great way to go into a job, was I said we had to have a plan and an agenda that we run on. We called it The Better Way and we put it out there. We had health and entitlement reform plans for all these programs. We had tax reforms…. House Republicans ran on it in 2016…. Somebody needs to run on doing this, then get elected and then go do it.”

Ryan on how fixing the debt will unlock the next great American century

“All roads lead back to getting our debt under control and the way you get your debt under control is you solve our entitlement programs. If you solve these problems, you can have health and retirement security in America for all Americans. You can have a great vibrant economy, a social safety net for the poor, and get this thing under control. We can do it so these problems can be fixed with prospective policies but we don’t have the politics or anywhere close to it today to get there. That is the problem we have right now.”

Ryan on his evolution on criminal justice reform

“Criminal justice reform is probably the one issue that came to my mind the best… I came to Congress in 1998 and it was Clinton and Biden, along with Republicans, saying we needed to be tough on crime. We needed three strikes and you’re out and mandatory minimum sentences.

We were really tough on crime and we passed all these laws to crack down on crime and we overshot. I didn’t really know that until 2014-2015 when I started doing all these listening sessions around the county and I learned that we were putting people away in jail for a long time and it was making these communities worse off. It was making people worse off and there were better alternatives like drug courts and the rest.

So, I learned that I was wrong in how I thought about criminal justice and it was over a course of about a two-year period of my researching this and my learning from governors, frankly, that sort of helped me learn this lesson and then change my position on it and we ended up passing criminal justice reform in 2017 and 2018.”

Ways & Means Committee advances MIECHV reauthorization, honoring Rep. Walorski & promoting evidence-based policies

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By: AIF Staff

Earlier this week, the House Committee on Ways and Means advanced legislation to reauthorize the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visitation (MIECHV) program   which supports expectant mothers and parents improve their lives and the lives of their young children through one-on-one home visits and intensive support.

The Committee honored the late Rep. Jackie Walorski, a long-time champion of the program, naming the legislation in her honor. As ranking Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas noted during the Committee’s consideration of the bill:

“MIECHV is a critical program that supports vulnerable families and aims to improve the health of mothers and babies through pregnancy into the early years of a child’s life. It is a bipartisan bill and it reflects many of our Republican priorities, including increasing transparency about outcomes for families and targeting dollars to the neediest communities.

This bill would gradually increase funding from $400 million a year to $800 million a year over a five-year period, and introduce a state match as a way to expand overall service capacity across the country. The principle is simple: The federal government will invest where the states see value in investing.

It also ensures that new matching funds are allocated to states based on the number of children under five living below poverty – so funding goes where the greatest need exists.

The bill increases transparency by creating a state-by-state outcomes dashboard so we can see how interventions are impacting families, and maintains the current focus on high evidence standards.

Unlike many of our government programs, MIECHV is evidence-based – so we know the real impact on families and children and are able to direct funding toward what works.

The program has demonstrated success in supporting expecting families to increase healthy behaviors by coaching parents on child nutrition and development and mitigating risk factors to prevent child abuse and neglect.”

American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan has long been an ardent supporter of the MIECHV program, which has been re-authorized under both Republican and Democratic Administrations.

The Ways and Means-passed legislation would build on the program’s strong base of evidence by increasing funding by $100 million and increasing the allocations for each state and territory. Given MIECHV has historically been funded by both federal and state governments, this reauthorization would increase the matching formula so for every $1 in state investments, the federal government would contribute $3.

It also would expand the transparency of data and evidence collected from the MIECHV program by adding additional reporting requirements and outcomes-based dashboards, which will help Congress track the impact of interventions over time. Even in a post COVID-19 environment, the legislation ensures that in-person, home visitations are required as part of the program which adds an important layer of accountability.

As Speaker Ryan stated during a visit to a Nurse-Family Partnership in South Carolina in 2021, MIECHV is changing lives and helping mothers, children, and communities across the country. It is an evidence-based success story  and the Ways and Means Committee should be commended for advancing this reauthorization which will help expand opportunities and fight poverty in a data-driven way.

Ryan leads conversation on how financial innovation can support workers amid inflationary periods

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By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – This week at the American Enterprise Institute, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan led a panel discussion with entrepreneurs and policy experts focused on how innovations in the financial services industry can expand economic opportunities for more Americans. With inflation at its highest rate in decades, low-income families and households desperately need tools that provide them greater financial flexibility making it a timely discussion.

Conversing with the Brookings Institution’s Aaron Klein, CEO and Founder of Earnin Ram Palaniappan, and Ida Rademacher of the Aspen Institute, Ryan solicited ideas on how the American banking system could be modernized using 21st century technology to improve the economic well-being of low-income families. The panel detailed how government and the private sector can work in tandem to develop products and policies that provide Americans with more financial security as they grapple with rising costs.

Video of the panel discussion is accessible here and some notable excerpts follow.

Paul Ryan on how innovation can help during inflationary periods:

“Working Americans are facing a time of sustained and rising inflation. Energy costs, food costs, and just everyday life has gotten more expensive. While workers are all-to-often seeing their paychecks lag behind, businesses are also facing a difficult time hiring.

“As we enter into this time of economic hardship, we know that households will face financial hardship. And we also know that reducing that hardship will require policymakers, for-profit organizations, and non-profits to explore new and innovative ways to improve access to financial institutions….

“Too often, when individuals run short of money, they either have nowhere to turn, or the places they do turn end up costing them more than they can afford. As policymakers look towards reducing costs for Americans looking to access financial services, we know that new financial technologies can be helpful in this goal.”

Aaron Klein on how the financial system holds low-income earners back:

“40% to 50% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck at some level. We’ve designed a [banking] system that assumes you always have money and you don’t care when the money comes in. And that assumption works great for the half of Americans who always have $1,000 in their accounts, who get free checking, and who have all these other benefits. Who is paying for that system are the people living paycheck to paycheck, who are paying overdrafts.

“One out of every 11 Americans has used a pay-day lender or paid overdraft fees. They’re the ones subsidizing free checking accounts… By my calculations over $100 billion of wealth has been transferred from people living paycheck to paycheck who use payday lenders and check-cashing operations….

“The private sector has developed some alternatives for wage access, real-time payment networks and other things, but we made a critical mistake when we put the Federal Reserve in charge of regulating the nation’s payment system [and determining] how fast that check clears when that money comes into your account. They’re also in charge of operating their own system called the automatic clearing house (ACH) system. So, they’re the operator and regulator.

“You wouldn’t put Blockbuster in charge of developing streaming. We have Netflix. That’s the mistake we’ve made [with the Federal Reserve’s role in our banking system] and the people that have suffered have been the people living paycheck to paycheck and the people that have prospered have been the banks regulated by the Federal Reserve, those who charge overdraft fees, check cashers, and payday lenders.

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“Ultimately, I don’t think we’re going to get to a workable solution without a regulatory regime that puts people first and that is reordered. We have a financial system where the less money you have, the more money it costs you to access your own money.”

Ram Palaniappan on how Earnin is increasing financial well-being through innovation:

“The way Earnin started was quite by chance. I was running another company and I found out that some of my employees were getting overdraft fees and payday loans and it didn’t make any sense to me because I thought I was paying them well.

I spoke with one of them and the problem she had was she needed money the next day. She couldn’t wait until the following Friday. It was Wednesday, so I said I will pay you for the days you’ve already worked. I tried to get our payroll system to do that and the payroll system couldn’t do it.

So, out of frustration, I said I’ll give you the money for the days you’ve already worked and when the payroll system finally does its thing, then you can pay me back. And it started out with me doing that for a handful of my employees and it was always in person when they would see me in the office and then this would happen.

Then, I moved to Cincinnati and they wanted to know if I would continue doing this for them and I didn’t mind doing it because I knew how these systems worked and I could tell if they were working or not. So, I continued to do it for them and initially it was done over Messenger and that’s not the most convenient way because I’d be with someone and keep getting messages, so I built a really crude web function that said if you need money, you can fill out this form.

When I had this webpage up, people really started to use it and what I realized is that if you give somebody access to their money when they need it, their life is so much simpler. They’re paying their bills on time. No more late fees on bills. No more overdraft fees. No more payday loans. This is when I realized that if I didn’t try to scale this product to help more people, I’d always feel bad about myself.”

Ida Rademacher on the need for a Commission on Financial Inclusion:

“There are lots of people getting at understanding what it really takes to deliver well-being for households [and what it takes] to give them dignity and agency and choice but there’s still not a bird’s eye view of how all the different pieces connect because people’s financial lives aren’t siloed in payment pieces and savings pieces and what’s going on day-to-day and week-to-week is still not connected. So, we ended up supporting a call to action with what I like to call a National Financial Inclusion Commission and we wanted to see how much support was out there for what really is this idea of a north star for financial well-being for all households and what is the financial infrastructure that can deliver on that.

It certainly felt like this was needed during COVID when all of the payments to households and businesses encountering some of these “last mile” problems, and to our delight, over 110 companies and civil rights organizations from every industry, association, and finance sector signed on in support of the idea of a comprehensive, coordinated, government-quarterbacked Commission to help think about financial inclusion as a foundational piece of inclusive growth in this country. We think it’s the right time. There certainly seems to be public and private sector will to do this.”

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“The whole vision for a Commission is that there is an ongoing, measured, structured place to have this conversation with rigor, and informing that conversation with data to come out with the answers to your question. We can’t fix financial inclusion, meaning helping with outcomes, unless we actually know what is the finance system is going to look like 10 years from now. Where does this disruption come from? What is going to mean for households, and let’s do that evaluation rigorously. I certainly don’t mean to imply that, you know, managing systemic risk is not a core piece of it but increasingly, if that is at odds with how the finance system facilitates people’s financial lives, we are not doing our jobs.”