Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan visited the University of Wisconsin to discuss public policy on Tuesday.
The discussion focused on bipartisanship, which Ryan said is necessary in leadership and legislation to make evidence-based policy decisions to benefit the country.
“If you get us past the ideological stalemates, this partisan bitterness, we can have a debate on facts using economics, control trials, data and analytics,” Ryan said. “Then we can forget about all the name calling, all the ideological warfare, and just focus on what works and what doesn’t.”
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Ryan emphasized the importance of evidence-based policy, particularly in today’s political climate, explaining how this method of evidence-based policy could be used to improve federal poverty policy and entitlement reform.
“With digital technology, the right incentive structures and experimentation at the local and state level and getting the public and private sector involved, getting charities involved more in a better-integrated way, I really it moves the needle on upward mobility in America,” Ryan said.
Similar instances of the need for bipartisan compromise can be seen in the issues surrounding the impending government shutdown.
Ryan said he finds it unlikely that current Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy can avoid a shutdown. McCarthy will likely honor the bipartisan spending agreement he made with President Joe Biden, which will cause the members of the Freedom Caucus of the Republican party to move to vacate him from office, according to Ryan.
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Ryan called this move from the Freedom Caucus as “nihilist,” to which Republicans could offer no alternative solution. This kind of political infighting makes the whole party appear ineffective, Ryan said, and he hopes a bipartisan vote could turn this around.
But, Ryan said he has a positive outlook on the future of American politics.
“I’m an optimistic person, because all of our country’s problems — the solutions are within our own power to solve these problems,” Ryan said. “Because of that, I think we’ll get it right and I think we’ll have a consensus.”
