American Idea Foundation

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At “Show Us the Data” Conference, Ryan recognizes advancements in evidence-based policymaking by federal agencies

At “Show Us the Data” Conference, Ryan recognizes advancements in evidence-based policymaking by federal agencies

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By: AIF Staff

Earlier this week, as part of the Coleridge Initiative’s Show Us the Data conference, American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan delivered a keynote address on how the federal government can utilize data and evidence to maximum effect and, in the process, help Americans out of poverty.

The Coleridge Initiative’s conference highlighted the ongoing work of data science teams who are modernizing the federal government’s information systems and dataflow. The conference aimed to answer the questions: How can federal agencies best use data and make informed decisions about what data to invest in? And how can researchers, academic institutions, and publishers help build data and evidence to better inform policy? 

In his remarks, Speaker Ryan highlighted the various steps of the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act. The idea started with a bipartisan Commission, setup by Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray. Then, many of the Commission’s recommendations codified into law. Now, the law is guiding government agencies to develop modern data collection, security, and dissemination practices. These practices will ultimately help the federal government and policymakers utilize and evaluate data which should result in better outcomes, particularly when it comes to fighting poverty.

Ryan’s remarks, which recognized the contributions of those experts who are advancing the data practices of the federal government, are accessible here. A transcript, edited slightly for clarity, follows.

“I spent 20 years in Congress working on a lot of economic issues. I spent five years before that working in the field of economics as a staffer and at think tanks. During my entire career, I found myself always wanting more data and I found myself trying to quantify things

“It’s why I served as Chairman of the Budget Committee and the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and as I looked through my career, what I realized was that when working with agencies like Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), their data wasn’t reaching the furthest extent possible. It wasn’t going where it needed to go. One of the other issues that I felt where the federal government had an important responsibility – and where it was really falling short, was alleviating poverty.

“The federal government does so much in this space. It spends about $1 trillion dollars a year over almost 100 different programs and as we evaluated this spending and looked at all of the data, we realized that we weren’t following the evidence and that the federal government was more or less measuring its progress on this important issue based on inputs. It measured how many programs are we creating and how much money are we spending on these programs and it was not measuring based on results and outcomes. It was not following the best results, finding what works and finding what didn’t work, and moving those taxpayer dollars to things that did work. That wasn’t happening in government so I basically decided to take on the challenge, midway through my career, to try and find a way of de-politicizing fighting poverty and taking the ideology out of these fights.

“And that’s the one other point I would make, which is as I went into this space and tried reforming lots of programs, I found myself in an ideological, partisan battle almost every step of the way as we tried to make things different and better. And so, what I realized was that data is the one thing that is really unassailable. The one unassailable thing today is facts, evidence, scientific data.

“This is what led me down this path and after speaking with a number of economists and teaming up with my buddy Patty Murray (D-WA), who is totally on the other side of the aisle but a good friend of mine nonetheless, we tried to find a way of sorting this out. [We asked] could we get the federal government to really use its data so that partners in academia, partners in the private sector, partners in the vendor community, and government agencies themselves could use this data and evidence? And if so, where would that take us?  Would that make our government work better? Would we be able to achieve the results we want to achieve?

“We can move down the path of making things work better and better fulfilling our goals and our missions and our visions without these hardcore, ideological, partisan battles and that is why we chose the Evidence Act. It’s why Senator Murray and I did a commission and then passed the bill we have now. And I’m really excited about the “Version 2.0” of the Evidence Act, which is where do we go from here, how do we deploy this, how do we make it work so it is better effectuating policy.

“I saw a couple of glimpses of the promise of this approach. I was in Manning, South Carolina earlier this year, visiting for the fourth or fifth time a program that I’m really enamored with, the Nurse-Family Partnership program. The Nurse-Family Partnership is a program that’s been around for a while and is funded through the MIECHV program. It’s one of a few programs where the federal government has been using data and collecting evidence on where a nurse visits a new, first-time mother – usually an inexperienced mother, to help make sure that this mom is really prepared for motherhood by providing prenatal and postnatal care. The results are simply amazing.

“It has a $6 to $1 cost-benefit ratio and there is a $27,000 improvement per family to society in the form of reduced government benefits because of this Nurse-Family Partnership program. And what was this program, politically speaking? It started with President Bush. It got expanded with President Obama and renewed under the Trump Administration. These are three very different presidents, very different administrations. The one thing the program had is unassailable data and evidence that showed it works.

“I saw that particular program as a window into a very positive future where we use data and evidence, working with the private sector, with the academic sector, with colleges and universities, with philanthropies and foundations, and with for-profits and the government and where we can really effectuate policy….

“I think we can leapfrog the stalemate. We can bypass all the unproductive, ideological and partisan gridlock we have and make government work. We can move the needle on the missions that we all want in society: We want poverty to be alleviated. We want upper mobility. We want to solve problems that society has and nowhere is this better made clear than if we follow evidence and data, so much of which is already being collected, but we need the tools and the capabilities to not just understand what’s being collected but empower people to find unassailable, unbiased, objective truth and facts and science and data and evidence so that we can really move the needle and solve problems….

“And so, I just want to commend the Coleridge Initiative and the award winners and say thank you for doing what you’re doing because you’re showing the promise of these ideas that we’ve had all along. Thank you and have a great conference.”

Government Matters Interview: Ryan to policymakers: Follow the data and tie funding to outcomes

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By: AIF Staff

Washington, DC – This weekend, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker Paul Ryan talked with Government Matters‘ Mimi Geerges about his work in Congress to fight poverty and expand economic opportunities. In the interview, Speaker Ryan discussed how the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act is currently being utilized by federal agencies to modernize data collection, analysis, security, and dissemination practices.

The implementation of this legislation, which Speaker Ryan sponsored with Senator Patty Murray of Washington, was the subject of Speaker Ryan’s remarks at the 2021 GovDATAx conference. At its core, the legislation is designed to improve the federal government’s use of data, evidence, and analytics so it can allocate funds more effectively and achieve meaningful results through social safety net programs.

Ryan’s interview with Government Matters is available here or by clicking the icon below. Some notable excerpts, edited slightly for clarity, follow.

How Ryan got involved and why he stayed involved in policy discussions about fighting poverty:

“I’ve always had just a big desire to focus on [fighting poverty]. I spent a lot of my time in Congress on these issues and I was just raised with this gorgeous notion of the American Idea, or what I call the American Idea, which is the condition of your birth should not determine the outcome of your life in a free society such as ours. Everybody has the right to rise, but also we should nurture people’s ability to rise and make the most of their life.”

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“When I left Congress, I wanted to still work on some of the ideas that I’m passionate about. I was a policymaker for 20 years in Congress. I left Congress but I didn’t leave my love of public policy, so I decided to start the American Idea Foundation so I could continue to focus on these issues – in particular, fighting poverty, that are very important to me…. I spent years on this first when I was Chairman of the Budget Committee and then when I was Ways and Means Chair. We were coming up on the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty. We had spent $15 trillion yet we hadn’t moved the needle nearly as much as we should have. And so, I spent a lot of my time figuring out what went wrong, what are the lessons, what are the takeaways, and one of the things, using my economic-thinking hat, that I took away was we weren’t measuring things the right way. We measured government’s success in fighting poverty based on effort and inputs. [We measured success by] how much money are we spending, how many programs are we creating versus measuring success on a set of results and outcomes. Where are we really getting people out of poverty? Where are people breaking the cycle of poverty where we deal with the tough issue of multi-generational poverty?

“That is where I got very interested in this issue which spawned me to create the Evidence Commission and then to write the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act to try to move the War on Poverty from an input-based and effort-based measurement system to an outcomes-based system where we actually measure our efforts based on results.”

The Nurse-Family Partnership program is a prime example of using evidence to improve outcomes:

“I was in South Carolina with Senator Tim Scott and Congressmen Joe Wilson and Ralph Norman in June and we went into rural South Carolina and looked at something called the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, which is authorized by a federal program called MIECHV, the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visitation program.

“It is one of the few evidence-based federal programs. What it does is it pairs a nurse with a low-income expectant mother and [the nurse] helps that mother through the prenatal stage up until her child is two years old. They use very rigorous data and reporting for these programs. This program was started by President George W. Bush. It was continued by President Barack Obama and recently reauthorized by President Donald Trump. So, [it expanded during] three different presidential administrations, all because of good data and because it had proven results to show it was working.

“It was not controversial, it was non-partisan. I was involved in each of these Administrations and the results are really clear. A study from 2019 shows that money invested yielded a 6 to 1 benefit to cost ratio. It provides $27,000 in savings per family in the form of reduced public assistance. It improves health outcomes of the mother and of the child. Participants have a higher likelihood of graduating high school and lower incidences of domestic violence.

“In other words, rigorous data is showing that this particular program of intervening and helping young, expectant mothers at the prenatal stage until their child is two years old really makes a difference. And doing these programs with rigorous data makes sure that the programs are done well and done effectively. This is one example of something that I think has worked really well because of data collection and because of evidence and this is the kind of thing that we’re promoting with the American Idea Foundation.”

Why the Evidence Based Policymaking Act was needed:

“It was basically needed because Congress was not evaluating whether what we were doing was working or not. There really wasn’t any process in place to measure the effectiveness and the outcome of our poverty-fighting efforts. The Evidence-Based Policymaking Act was based upon the Evidence Commission that said: “Here’s how you do this, here’s how you can collect data, here’s how you secure data with privacy and cyber protections, and then here’s how you disseminate that so that we can use that and measure whether or not something works or not.” [This way] policymakers can be better informed so that we can tie evidence to funding, so we can go with what works versus what doesn’t work.”

Adopting Best Practices to collect better, more impactful data and evidence:

“I’m a huge believer in what we call Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs). I teach at Notre Dame and I work with Notre Dame’s Laboratory for Economic Opportunity. We run randomized controlled trials, about 75 per year, on poverty programs so you can really measure what works. Using RCTs, using evidence, and then showing policymakers what works and what doesn’t work is, I think, going to really move us so we can be more effective as a federal government, more effective as charities, and more effective as nonprofits.

“And then the other thing I’d say is removing the silos so that data can cross over, so you can cross-connect data so you can learn from it. That’s one of the problems that the federal government has is that we collect data in silos, so break down those silos, allow data-sharing across different data sets, and you can really get some rich, robust research to find out what works and what doesn’t.”

To read the legislative text of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, click here. 

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Panel: The COVID-19 Economic Recovery, Inequities, and helping Working Americans

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By: AIF Staff

Earlier this week, American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan took part in a bipartisan panel discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. The conversation, entitled Resilience After Recession: The Emerging Landscape for American workers and families, centered on how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated economic disparities and how policymakers can ensure that workers, families, and children have the support necessary to thrive and prosper.

Along with experts and thought-leaders from across the ideological spectrum, Speaker Ryan shared his thoughts on the Democrats’ proposed reconciliation package and discussed provisions of the legislation that will, and in some cases, will not, assist lower-income Americans in successfully navigating the post-COVID economy. He also touched on how evidence and data provide opportunities to cut through partisan gridlock that is leaving too many Americans struggling economically.

The panel discussion is accessible below. Excerpts of Speaker Ryan’s remarks, edited slightly for clarity, follow.

Concerns with the Democrats’ reconciliation bill and its potential economic impact:

“It should come as no surprise that I think this reconciliation bill would be a big mistake for a couple of reasons, but I’ll try to say something positive about it at the end.

“Number one, I think it’s going to do a lot of harm to our economy. Just with these tax provisions alone, you’re going to reignite inversions. You’re going to bring the business tax rate for corporations and pass-throughs back to the highest in the industrialized world when you add state taxes on top of it. As a result, you’re going to make American workers and companies much, much less competitive.

“New inversions are going to start. You’re going to slow down job growth and slow down economic growth and at a very basic level, where we should start with is [agreeing] that we want economic growth. You cannot have upward mobility without economic growth. I like the fact that our labor markets are tight, but I want to make sure that we have jobs that can pull people into the workforce at higher-paying jobs and that depends on economic growth. If you make it harder for the job-producers and smaller businesses to expand and grow, as this bill does, then I think you’re going to be self-defeating in that area. Then the fiscal effects from this, you take a look at this bill, and I spent my career doing reconciliation, it’s kind of a fiscal train wreck.

“The Democrats are disguising the true cost of the bill and they’re disguising how much money you’re going to actually raise in revenue from the pay-fors, so I don’t think it is paid for and it’s going to give us a huge fiscal headache. Our debt and deficits are going to get out of control. This will put pressure on our dollar as a world reserve currency and our economy is going to slow down with bad tax policies.

“If we lose sight of the debt and deficits and the cost of financing our social contract, it becomes really difficult to finance and think of the social chaos and the political chaos that would occur with a debt crisis. First, let’s focus on getting this economy growing and, like I said, before COVID, the bottom two quintiles of income earners were getting the biggest wage increases they’ve ever had, so we had real standard of living increases.

“In addition to this, I think this [reconciliation bill] is going to increase inflation in the economy.  I think a lot of these spending programs will convert inflation from what was hopefully temporary to more structural, so I think this bill is going to give us the wrong kind of pressure on inflation. I think that the reconciliation bill would be a big mistake.

Finding specific policies within reconciliation that both parties can embrace:

“Let me try and find something positive to say about it: I think the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) reforms are good reforms and that is something I’d like to see both parties embracing. I tried doing an EITC expansion for childless adults and I think that’s just a no-brainer. The data is really clear on this….

“We also need to have it embedded in the first paycheck on a monthly basis. There’s a systems problem at Treasury that we need to overcome but the Childcare Tax Credit and the EITC should not be a lump sum at the end of the year, it should be embedded in the paycheck. I think that’s something that everybody should come together on because the data is really clear that that really works.

“There are some discrete points I think that could be passed and that people on both sides could embrace, but I just think the reconciliation bill, particularly because the tax policy and the fiscal time-bomb and nature of these entitlement programs will actually give us a worse situation and slow down economic growth.”

What policymakers can do to ensure a more robust and equitable economic recovery:

“One thing I think we should focus on is data. My foundation is focused on making sure that the Evidence Act is well executed. The Office of Management and Budget is leading on this and I think there’s a lot of room to improve data collection, especially since COVID, because blue collar workers were harmed so much more than white collar workers.

“And so, I think there’s a lot of room for data collection and room to improve the evidence around these policies around workforce training. There are a lot of workforce training programs out there, but the problem is we haven’t really tracked the evidence of success. There are some that have been done using randomized control trials (RCTs) that show where success can be had, so my argument at this moment is: Let’s use data to find out what works and to find out what doesn’t work. I think there’s an opportunity to follow the data.”

Rethinking and customizing our social insurance system:

“I think in the 21st century with data and digital advances and with the economics field that we have currently, we can re-think how we design our social insurance system. I mean, look at my own experience with EITC and just trying to make it monthly. I didn’t have any problems with my side of the aisle. I didn’t have any problems with Democrats. I couldn’t do it because the federal government just couldn’t do it. This stuff is just ridiculous.

“And so, I really believe we need to rethink the way our systems work and the way we design our benefits. We just paint everyone with the same brush. We treat everybody the same and as a result of this bad macroeconomic policy, we have bad micro-economic policies with benefit offsets and with benefit cliffs and that really sets people back.”

The need to modernize the social safety net:

“We have a 20th century social insurance system that we need to turn into a 21st century social insurance system… I really do think our entire social insurance safety net is due for an overhaul. It should be based on data, based on evidence, based on what is proven to work, and yes, we should do some experimentation. We should run some RCTs across the board but I think adding new programs on top of old failed programs and hoping that it’s going to be done differently or produce new results is just not going to work and is the same mistake that we’ve been making.

“Frankly, given what we have in technology, in data and analytics, and in digital technology, I really believe we can streamline our social insurance system with an eye toward proven methods of upward mobility to help those people who historically have not gotten ahead. I think the pandemic hurt the least among us the most and I think Michelle was right about the post-2008 recession, it was the wealth effect by the Federal Reserve which helped people at the top do extremely well and we had stagnation below that because of bad fiscal and regulatory policy.

“I think there are better policies to get us faster economic growth, faster wage growth, better living standards, but throwing on top of it brand new ideas that are untested and putting them on top of a creaky social insurance infrastructure from the 20th century that is not meeting its potential, I just don’t think it is a smart move and I think it’s going to give us a huge debt hangover. I think it’s going to be bad for our economy.

“I would take today’s technology, overhaul the social insurance system, focus on getting the incentives right, the benefit mixes right, and the thing that always bothered me when I studied all of this stuff is the benefit offsets….

“I think there’s a way of dealing with the benefit cliffs so you can customize benefits on a per person basis using technology and using good economics so that it always pays to move ahead. You’re always making sure that the benefit mix – whether it’s job training, childcare, transportation, I’m in Wisconsin so heating, is designed properly so that a person is always on the curve on the way up and you don’t have all these benefit cliffs knocking them back. That’s what I would be focusing on right now to try and build a 21st century social insurance system that is durable, effective, and by the way, affordable, and that doesn’t bankrupt the country.”