Validating Reforms that Expand Opportunity

By: AIF Staff

Mackinac Island, MI – Earlier this week, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was a keynote speaker at the 2024 Mackinac Policy Conference, hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. In a fireside chat moderated by former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and attended by Michigan’s business, community, philanthropic, and elected leaders, Ryan touched on the biggest challenges facing America in the 21^st century.

Bemoaning increased partisanship, expressing concerns about the direction of the country, and acknowledging short and long-term economic issues like the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and persistently high interest rates, Ryan outlined solutions to get our nation back on track.

Drawing on experience gleaned during two decades in elected office, Ryan shared a pragmatic and optimistic message, in keeping with the Conference’s theme of “Bridging the Future Together.”

Two recaps of Ryan’s conversation are accessible here:  

• Detroit Regional Chamber: MPC 24: A Conversation with Paul Ryan & Harold Ford Jr.
• Michigan Advance: Ryan talks misinformation, polarization, and pitfalls of Democrats & Republicans

Excerpts of Ryan’s comments, edited lightly for clarity, follow.

Working with poverty-fighting organizations on evidence-based solutions

“I teach Economics at Notre Dame and I’m on the Board of their Poverty Lab, which is called “LEO”, the Laboratory of Economic Opportunity. And what my foundation does is we go find what we think are really interesting poverty programs, then we seed fund them so that they can [conduct] a randomized control trial [with] Notre Dame economists who track and measure that poverty program over the length of 1-3 years, run a trial on it, and see if it proves to be really successful.

We’re building mechanisms to try and scale and replicate those poverty [fighting] successes across the country and NPower is one that we’re working with. It is here in Detroit and there are NPowers all around the country where they are getting disaffected youth… and underprivileged kids into tech jobs and providing them with the curriculum they need to become good tech workers in this tech-centered economy. There are a lot of interesting poverty programs out there like this….

The last law I wrote when I was in Congress, and Patty Murray (D-WA) was my partner on it, was called the Evidence Act. It allows all the federal data on poverty programs to be released to researchers so that we can measure the effects of our poverty policy….

The question is: Can we get at the root causes of poverty, to break its cycle, to really reignite upward mobility in America, to get people fundamentally and fully out of poverty?

There is so much now that we can learn through economics, through data, and through research practices, and we think there’s a real unlocking moment in front of us. So, I’m really confident we can have a step function increase in getting at poverty because if we apply our resources to practices and procedures that we know work and scale and replicate those, I think we can make a huge difference.

It involves the public sector and nonprofit sector and private sector so what we’re trying to do with our poverty lab at Notre Dame and with our foundation is find those bright lights that are out there and making a huge difference. We want to find out what their secret sauce, determine is it repeatable and if so, replicate it.”

Balancing free speech rights on college campuses

“I think Ben Sasse probably got it right at the University of Florida. He’s the President of the University of Florida. Ben’s a good friend of ours. He basically said: Free speech, we respect, but if you are infringing on other people’s rights, you’re going to be held accountable. If you’re going to take away space from other people to freely assemble and prevent other people from going to class or stop people going to the library, you’re going to be removed and you’re going to face the consequences of the law. There are places on the campus to practice free speech and you can do it all you want, but as soon as you start infringing upon other people’s rights, that’s when you’re breaking a law and that’s when you’re going to be held accountable.”

Combatting misinformation in Congress and in business

“If you’re a leader these days, you have got to design new mechanisms and tactics to try and suss all of [this misinformation] out so that you can call balls and strikes and so that when political decisions are potentially being made on misinformation, you have a good BS detector….

The foreign policy stuff is actually easier [when it comes to misinformation] because you can bring members into a SCIF, where we have these secure facilities for clandestine briefings. You can get briefings from the Intelligence Community, and they will tell you what actually happened and what didn’t happen. If somebody’s a total conspiracy theorist, they just won’t believe them, and we’ve got people like that but that’s what they’re going to do. You can, on foreign policy at least, get people to attend real, classified briefings to give them real information to help them make better-informed decisions. You don’t have that domestic policy. You’ve got constituents and people in their information cul-de-sacs being fed an algorithm which further feeds your biases and reinforces your beliefs and places you in your sedentary position against others. That’s a real challenge for a 21^st century democracy.

I think the key thing, as a leader, is to make sure that you call it all out. You do everything you can when you see this stuff developing to find out what the truth and the facts are and then call it out and you just have to design a specific tactic to do this…. When you see some weird conspiracy theory popping up in your ranks, just know it’s going to potentially bleed into legislation and form positions, so you better get it in its infancy. If you let these things fester and go on because you’re too afraid of taking people on, you’re going to have a serious problem on your hands.”

One positive thing that President Biden has done

“He built NATO up. He formed a very good alliance to help Ukraine. I can nickel and dime the specifics of his Ukraine policy – I think he was too little, too late on a lot of things like F-16s and ATACMS, but I think he did a good job of stitching NATO back together and building up our allies to confront Russia.”

The best policy of the Trump Administration

“His fiscal policy on regulations and taxes. His fiscal policy on the tax side. Judges, too. I think he put up some pretty good judges.”

Rising stars in American politics & the legislative ‘brain drain’

“In terms of soberness and the politics of working across the aisle to solve serious problems in our states, I would say Glenn Youngkin. He’s Reagan-esque in that he intentionally ran an inclusive campaign, not one based on identity politics – which is wrong and both parties are playing it these days. [Glenn Youngkin] ignored identity politics and won in a blue state as a problem-solving, can-do kind of leader…. And he’s crushing it.

I don’t know your Governor [Gretchen Whitmer] well, but she seems to be pretty popular and is definitely a star in your party.

On my side, I think there are some young people in Congress that are pretty impressive. These are names you wouldn’t likely know: Laurel Lee, Randy Feenstra, Bryan Steil, though one of our best guys just left, Mike Gallagher.

What I’m worried about in Congress is the great policymakers are looking at the place and saying: “I’m going to do something else with my life. I can be more productive, so I’m not staying here.”

A lot of the young, bright, up-and-coming, workhorse legislators are leaving because Congress is giving them a bad taste in their mouths. I’m personally, as a fan of the institution, quite worried about who’s leaving and who’s coming to replace them in Congress.”

The next steps in the Israel-Palestine conflict and in Rafah

 “Biden, obviously, is under tremendous political pressure from the progressive base of his party. I think he’s made some huge mistakes lately on this. I think [Biden] should have gone faster to get this thing done, instead of nickel and diming [Israel]….

This could have been over with sooner and the last thing we should do, as a country, is incentivize terrorist groups to use civilians as human shields. We don’t want to reward that.

Obviously, I have a pro-Israel slant here, because I think it’s extremely important that we not reward terrorists for taking civilian hostages and using them as human shields because if we reward that behavior, we’re going to get more of that behavior.

I know that Michigan is seen as a state where this [Israel-Palestinian conflict] is a big issue. It’s a big issue everywhere. I think this will be done by the time the election rolls around. I think Bibi Netanyahu knows he’s got this kind of a timeline on his hands. I think he’s getting a lot of pressure from the Biden [Administration] to get this thing done. It’s a doable operation. It’s a finite piece of land. I think they’ll get it done by the election.”

On the Federal Reserve’s continued independence & Powell’s performance

“We always told [Fed. Reserve Chair Jay Powell] that we have your back. Your independence is sacrosanct to the dollar and to our monetary policy. You have to change the Humphrey-Hawkins law to change and compromise the independence of the Federal Reserve.

Now, the Federal Reserve can make their own mistakes to compromise their independence but that’s on them. For a president to be able to effectuate Federal Reserve policy, the Humphrey-Hawkins act has to pass [Congress]. You can’t use reconciliation for that. It takes 60 votes. In other words, it ain’t going to happen.

The law governing the Federal Reserve is not going to change. You are not going to have the kind of votes you would need in Congress. [Former President Trump] might jawbone them, and he might complain, but that’s about all he can do….

[Powell] got us through COVID really effectively. He set up a lot of facilities that were really important to prevent a deflationary spiral but then he was late on inflation… Jay was late. You could identify a handful of reasons why he was late [on inflation], but he was late, and I wish he would have talked more about…fiscal policy….  The last Biden stimulus, meaning the final Covid bill, was unnecessary. We were already coming out of COVID and there was a political moment where [the Biden Administration] shoved a lot of spending out the door. Even Keynesian economists on the left, like Larry Summers and Jason Furman, were telling us… this is going to create inflation. Jay knew it was going to create inflation. He was told and he did it anyway.”

By: AIF Staff

On March 27, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan delivered a keynote address on the State of American Politics. As part of OU’s Presidential Speakers Series, Ryan was invited to share his thoughts on the challenges facing the next generation of American leaders and to discuss how we can overcome them in a way that reflects our nation’s timeless principles.

Ryan’s entire speech is accessible via the following link. Excerpts from his address (edited lightly for clarity) are included below.

A personal connection to the University of Oklahoma:

“I was in this room not even a year ago for the Owl Ceremony for my late mother-in-law, Prudence Little, who was inducted (posthumously) in the Order of the Owl. I have lots of deep roots here that span the length of my marriage and so, I call myself a kissing cousin to Oklahomans… I’ve been coming to your ball games every other year during deer season, which some people around here also call Thanksgiving.

I’ve been coming here since 1999 and to give you a sense of the appreciation that I’ve developed over the years for not just this particular institution, but for this community, this network of people, this tight state of people who care deeply for one another – my father-in law, Dan Little, is here. Our cousin, Dan Boren, is here. And just to give you a sense of how the decisions get made in my house, as many of you are, we are big bird hunters where I come from. I import cheese to your state, and I export venison and ducks from your state and so, my wife and I decided to get a couple of bird dogs. And as a lifelong Wisconsinite, whose parents lived in Madison, I thought naturally our dogs are going to be named “Bucky” and “Badger.” Long story short, our dogs are named “Boomer” and “Sooner”, so you understand how we make decisions in my family!”

The State of American Politics & Tests facing our Democracy

“The state of American Politics today is under duress. It’s easy to identify where and how and under what circumstances, it’s a little hard to identify what we do about it but… it’s not just America. Democracy itself is being tested around the world in two basic ways: From without and from within….

We are being tested by our adversaries – the illiberal, anti-democracies like the Communist dictatorship of China, the thugocracy of Russia and Iran and North Korea. We are being tested by autocrats where one man makes a decision, and they get stuff done…. [These adversaries are hoping their form of government] will be better than democracy. It will perform better than democracies. It will be faster and leaner and meaner, and they’ll get to the finish line faster than we do. That’s their bet and that’s a serious test.

The good news in this – and I think Stephanie Bice and Tom Cole will agree with me – the one basically bipartisan thing in Congress today is this mutual bipartisan agreement that this is a challenge. We have got a China challenge on our hands and the House Select Committee on China has been remarkably bipartisan. They put together a huge vote the other day on tactics and theories and things we need to do to address [TikTok]. So, I think our political system is rising to the occasion to take on this challenge from “without,” to take on this challenge from tyrannies trying to undermine democracy and poking and prodding at us in many different ways….

The bigger test of democracy is from within ourselves. It’s this polarization. These tyrannies are betting that America cannot get this job done. They are betting that we will so polarize ourselves and tear ourselves apart and relativize ourselves into self-immolation. We will be so polarized that we will render ourselves incapable of solving big problems, of coming together and achieving consensus and solving the things in front of us. They are betting we’ll be too slow to act versus their lean, mean, efficient, one-guy-makes-a-decision system.

We’ve been at each other’s throats [in America before] but we really haven’t had this level of digitization and a new wrinkle in this story is this idea of moral relativism. This idea that there are no fixed truths. It’s your truth, his truth, her truth, my truth, whatever your truth…. And the challenge with this type of relativism is we’re not putting any premium on actual facts and actual truth.”

Overcoming the “zero sum” mindset to solve America’s problems:

“When you have politics designed to divide, when you have a digital system where the incentive structure is to tap into emotions of fear, envy, anger, hatred, and differentness – not hope, inclusion, and inspiration, when you have a political system with that center structure baked into it, we end up with a type of politics that has all of us playing a “zero sum” game.

“There are a lot of games that are zero sum. We have static games all the time right over there in that football stadium. I love watching OU beat OSU, but a football game is “zero sum” where there’s one winner and one loser. This is, frankly, not how the game of life works. It’s not how individual personal relationships work; it’s not how economics works; it doesn’t need to be how national alliances work. You can have “positive sum” games. You can have win-win situations.

My whole management philosophy in Congress was to set as many “positive sum” games as you can possibly have so that legislators – men and women who came from districts with individual passions, with different political stripes and parties – can play a “positive sum” game. I wanted them to find that Venn Diagram where things overlap and can move forward so we get things done.

It’s why you are so blessed here in Oklahoma. You have legislators. You have do-ers. Tom Cole is the manifestation of someone who works…. really hard, who knows his stuff, who is respected by the other side of the aisle, who looks for the Venn Diagram of “positive sum games” daily and gets things done. Tom is about to become one of the most powerful guys in Congress, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee…. The only thing that has to get done every year is writing the federal budget and Tom Cole is about to be named Chairman of that Committee. It’s really a high honor and we need more Tom Cole’s coming to Congress…. That’s also why you’re blessed to have Stephanie Bice…”

Reasons for Optimism that America will meet its challenges:

“The thing that makes me excited and happy and hopeful is the afternoon I spent with students here at OU. They had amazing questions and were such thoughtful people who are really interested in learning about the world, making a difference, and finding their path in life. I’m trying to find the happy ending here – and there is a happy ending here – which is America is known for regenerating itself….

We’ve got adversaries trying to take out democracy and replace democracy. We have problems internally where we are at each other’s throats and we’re sending people to represent us who are going at people’s throats, but we know we can regenerate and get ourselves past these problems. That’s the one amazing thing about America and that’s the upside of all of this.

We have some serious problems. We’ve got big fiscal problems. We have all these foreign policy challenges. But every one of America’s problems are totally within our own capacity to solve. What I think we’re going to go through — and it probably won’t be in this election cycle – is polarization fatigue where people are unsatisfied and sick and tired of problems going unsolved. And when that polarization fatigue sets in and when the pile of unresolved problems gets high enough, I believe, just like we have always done in the past, the American people are going to demand results. They are going to demand we stop this and actually solve problems.”

Channeling Winston Churchill:

“Winston Churchill said two things that I think are so appropriate for today. The first thing he said is democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the other forms of government.

Democracy is messy and sloppy but when it resolves itself, when the consensus occurs, nothing can stop it because it is the true power of a self-determining people. We are a free society and the things that come out of free societies – the innovation, the private property rights, the freedoms – are going to beat the tyrants. They can’t centrally plan the kind of things that democracies can do and that’s why we will win the 21^st century. These are things that only a free people can do and that’s why I am so bullish about it.

The other thing that Churchill said, and this is where the entire world is looking to us, is the American people can be counted upon to do the right thing, but only after they’ve exhausted all of the other possibilities.

I think we are going through that churn now. This is going to be one ugly election. We all know it. It will be [one of the longest] general elections we’ve had in modern history but at the end of this thing, because you’re electing people like Tom Cole and bright rising stars like Stephanie Bice, we are going to get through it.”

To read more about Speaker Ryan’s visit to the University of Oklahoma, check out these articles from the Norman Transcript, the Journal Record, and theOU Daily.