Transcripts For CSPAN3 Representative Paul Ryan R-WI On Combating Poverty In America 20240622

It is essential we write a check to candidates. Cattrell when he was alive, god rest his soul, the white folks got together and said we want the you to run for mayor. Question. Her man andrews. How much training do Police Officers in your Community Service receive in how to assist those with Mental Health issues. We actually have a Great Program where Police Officers receive two days of training, relative to Mental Health. There is also a Mental Health court. We have a new unit that allows Police Officers to take people who they believe have mental problems to that issue. But one of the things that we have been very, very strong on is deescalation. Trying to get Police Officers to understand, yep, youve got the gun, yep, youve got the badge. That means you have the power and you dont have to use any of that. Real quick on that. Ive been going around encouraging Police Officers saying theyre going to be the peacekeepers. They need to endeavor to be the peace makers when it comes to a situation. They dont think like that. They think im going to make you do. No. Lets talk about making it peaceful so we can go home, everybody. Michael, final comment. In st. Louis, when you talked about mr. Powell, that was a problem we had. He had Mental Illness and was dead in 16 seconds. We have work to do in terms of training our departments, large and small. The City Department is a large one. Ferguson is small. And it definitely has to be done across this nation. Final comment. Its comprehensive. There are blueprints out there but it has to be communitydriven. Thats a role that not just the urban league resist, resist, resist. Organize, organize, organize. Pray, pray, pray. Closing comments. Fo folks if you felt a sense of urgency, its because im sick and tired of us having gatherings where we talk, discuss, but then we dont talk about real action plans. Heres what actually happened. If you look here, there were at least 15 to 20 different d distinct things you can do leaving here. Mark and his staff, they should take the ideas and email them to every one of you. Thats first. Then what they need to do is, allow you to decide as a chapter, what are you going to focus on and next year report on what you did. Because theres a waste of time to talk about what we need to work on and then dont come back with, you know what, we discussed it last year, we heard it and then implemented it so it has to be there. Ill be happy to come back to have a discussion on what you accomplished but not coming back to of a discussion on what we need to do. Freedom schools, the two of you all stand up, bro. Yall stand up, you can talk right now. Im only about us getting stuff much there is no time for talk its time for us to get the hell to work. Thanks a lot. The cspan cities tour visits literary and Historic Sites across the nation to hear from local historians, authors and Civic Leaders every weekend on cspan 2s book tv and cspan 3. With congress on its summer resees, 6 00 p. M. Today we head to waco, texas for a history of the texas rangers, the story of the branch davividian stand off. Today at 6 00 eastern. Tonight at 9 30 on cspan, Washington Post executive editor marty barron talks about threats to freedom of expression across the world, covering world events and the state of journalism. Early last year, russia authorities were given the power to block websites. By the summer of last year, speech on the internet was constrained even further. New rules required anyone with a daily online audience of 3,000 people to register with the oversite agency. Names and Contact Details were to be provided and bloggers would be held liable for anything deemed misinformation. Late last year, a new russian law required data about russian users be required within the country. That way russian would have easy access to information about the use of facebook, twitter, google and other services. The russian government already had an arsenal of laws it could use against those speaking frooe friefriel freely. Additional risks. Bloggers were more likely to muzzle themselves for fear of fines and criminal prosecution. Many of the rules are considered vague and confusing but ambiguity is a weapon in the hands of government and that is the case in russia today. In russia, Vladimir Putin has been master you feel in creating an atmosphere which n which there are no clear rules so intellectuals and artists stifle themselves in order to not run afall of vague laws and vaguer social pressure. This Dartmouth College Event Features New York Times washington editor elizabeth viewmiller. This forum airs tonight at 9 30 p. M. On cspan. Community activists and journalists look at the challenge of poverty, Gang Violence and drug addiction in low income communities and whats being done to address them. Congressman paul ryan, chair of the house ways and Means Committee and nfl hall of Famer Deion Sanders offer their views. Event cohosts, the center for neighborhood enterprise and the News Platform opportunity lives released a new documentary mini series called comeback, telling stories of individuals overcoming adversity in americas communities. Good. Lets get under way with our some of the folks here actually hold the title of phd. The mudslinging start, yes, indeed. Ive asked the pastor to stick around as comoderator of this panel. Right, hes used to adaptation here on the fly. But ill just quickly introduce the panel then were going to hear a little bit from glen how willery and ill explain that in a second. Professor lowery is professor of economics at brown university. The full bios are in your program so i wont go into it. And in his professor lowery was one of the first academics to really write thoughtfully about the programs that weve been discussing. As long ago as 20 years ago, 30 years ago in Public Interest and first things, magazines like that. Gerard robinson is resident fellow at aei, an education policy, hes been there for, what, six hours now . 6 10. 6 10, not that hes counting. Clarence paige is a syndicated columnist in with the Chicago Tribune and in 1989 was a won the pulitzer for commentary and mr. Paige has been a loyal fan of the grassroots approaches to the problems of the inner city and has written eloquently about the programs that are represented here in newspapers across the country. The editor of National Affairs magazine is a fellow at the ethics and Public Policy center and he, too, has written recently, i highly recommend an essay he wrote in the journal first things called the long way around . Taking the long way. Which is really an excellent summary of the principles behind these programs. Fred siegel is the senior fellow at the manhattan institute, most recently the author of a book called revolt against the masses but i think in the context of what weve been discussing, he is the author of a book written in the mid90s called the future once happened here talking about the experience of new york city and the decline of Civil Society in the face of some of the Government Programs and cultural changes that weve been talking about and of course, pastor soares you met before. Glen lowery, weve asked him to talk very briefly and i should add quickly since some of us hold this pitchh. D. Status, we an hour for all of souse were going to have a freeflowing conversation right after professor lowery talks a bit about these programs in the context of a fellow named james c. Scott which wrote this book seeing like a state which i think would be a very valuable book for anyone interested in these questions to read. Professor lowery . Thanks, its a pleasure to be here. That earlier panel today was quite inspiring to me and the celebrity and political leaders intervention was also quite inspiring, make me think something along these lines might happen. I want to make a point of observation. Yes, i have a ph. D. And im the alumnus of a Halfway House where i recovered from cocaine addiction 20 years ago and it changed my life. The man who ran that house was a christian dedicated community worker, he happened to have been white. Didnt bother me. And when he used the n word asking me what were you doing on the streets of boston like any n showing your ass, i could have walked out because i didnt know the answer to my question about that time. But enough about that. James scott a political scientist at yale, an academic and he writes big what itty tomes and this is one of them. In this book he reminds us of the failure of massive statesponsored public interventions like the collect i havization of soviet russias agriculture or the Mass Relocation of rural populations in the interest of somebodys plan, he points out how they failed. He then analyzes why they failed. Ive only got a few seconds. Bottom line is, some kinds of knowledge, which are necessary for big bureaucratic and state interventions lose track of other kinds of knowledge that are absolutely fundamental for solving problems. Systematic regularized bureaucratized knowledge of the kind you get when you undertake a census, for example, requires a leveling activity where you lose sight of the fine details and complex interconnections that make real communities work. Experts who would have their ideas applied broadly across many different venues dont have the local knowledge that they would need in order to be able to solve a problem in any particular venue. People working on the ground in such places whove seen their lives come full there do that v that knowledge. When the state acts, according to james scott, it pushes the latter kind of knowledge off the stage in the interest of making room for the former. Sometimes that can merely fail. Sometimes it leads to massive disasters in which millions of people lose their lives to famine, repression and so forth and so on. Its never a good idea. Thats james scotts argument in a nutshell and im just here to recapitulate it as your local ivy league professor. I want to say a couple more things on my own account if i may just very quickly. I made notes as i was listening. Its not just the poverty industry standing in the way of expanding this stuff. The ideological stakes here are huge. Were talking about labor capital relations, were talking about international trade. Were talking about how you run health care in this country. Were talking about the credibility of diametrically opposed philosophies or ideologies about how to govern ourselves. This business here is political. Im sorry. Inescapably, necessarily, that doesnt mean it has to be partisan and that doesnt mean it has to not get anywhere but to not see its political, to not see that the players here are not simply poor people, that to some degree the poor people and their poor communities are pawns in a larger game would be to make a big mistake. How do i know if its true. Ive already described that. Theres different kinds of knowledge so i wont dwell there. Spiritual battle. I pause because well, weve got reverend so and so, minister so and so, ministry so and so, everybody is talking about what god is doing. Its supposed to be secular here, right . Its supposed to be nonreligious. Its supposed to be states not going there. Supposed to be separation. But in fact to reach people it would appear you have to reach people in an idiom that doesnt work well with a neutrality or areligiosity. Now, im not trying to pick a fierkts i just want to understand the terrain were working from. I have a young man who could steal a candy bar and he doesnt steal it. One is because he reckons hell get caught and the price is too high. Another account is that im not a thief. Which one do you think will keep him on the straight and narrow . The constant monitoring of microincentives to make sure he knows the cost of violating the rule is too high or the incullication within him of a sense of who and whose he is so that he doesnt want to steal a candy bar because hes not a thief. It strikes me that were in this latter idiom here and thats important to say. Its important to say to the left and the right. Because you have reductionist materialist conceptions of human nature running rampant all across the political spectrum. Finally, the dignity battle, and ill subside. My communities and my people, there is no dont tell me theres not no there there. Dont make these communities and these people into the subjects of your charity. Dont smother them with the soft bigotry of low expectations. Treat them just like you would your own communities and your on people. If they neglect their children, call them on it. If they behave thuggishly, call them on it. Dont patronize me. Fantastic, thats a great segue into the question im going to throw out to you folks. You heard about this gap between the world that many of us live in as writers, asing a dem i cans and so forth and the world that youve just heard from. Our challenge today is to make some stabs at building bridges across the that gap or preparing the way to move some of what we heard, some of the wisdom that we heard into the world of Public Policy, how do we go about that . And just an historical note, bob said this is the first time in washington that this sort of thing has happened. Actually, bob was arranged one of the early versions of that at the American Enterprise institute in the mid70s at the beginning of what became the mediating structures project. Pet pet peter berger and Richard John Newhouse were who were academics at the same sat down with folks like the ones weve heard from today, also to listen. And bob was the run who arranged that exchange. Bob went on to be one of the first to write a theoretical account of the grassroots afloech a summons to life about the house of umoji in philadelphia. So what response to do we have to this gap . How can we as speak who are knowledgeable about Public Policy, about the larger world of public affairs, how can we begin to break the wisdom of the grassroots into the councils of public life . Anyone . Well, first of all, thank you for extending the honor to participate in todays panel. My takeaway is simple Education Matters. And when we hear education we assume it has to take place in a school building. What ive learned today is that education is ubiquitous. It takes place at home, in faithbased centers, in Halfway Houses. In parking lots. It takes place all over. I can tell you we have 14 sates where education is the number one line item in a governors budget. 27 its k 1212 and higher ed combined. We have money and we have money to invest. The question is what can we do as administrators to make sure that the investment were making is reaching the people it should meet. Sometimes we have to meet people where they are and not where we want them to meet us. My take away is Education Matters and i need to rethink how we deliver it better. Listening to this, ill stewart a confession, too. I have a ph. D. And i worked on capitol hill and worked for a president , ive committed all the since. [ laughter ] one thing that struck me, the question keeps arising, why dont people see this as working . Why dont people see it and send resource there is . I was left thinking about the great late student of the american constitution walter burns who asked why is there such hostility to the american system among intellectuals . He said the problem with the american system works great in practice but it would never work in theory. And [ laughter ] in a sense were looking at something similar. When you run into a situation like that you have to say whats wrong with the theory . Its not what we do enough. If we ask whats wrong with the theory we would find ourselves looking at a couple different of explanations. With stories like this and incredible people like the ones weve heard from today is something that people dont impolicety believe, that social capital can be built, not just destroyed. It can be gained not just spent. Not only when youre rearing june children but all the time, every time more than one person is together doing something theyre building norms. They can be destructive, constructive, for better or worse but theyre always Building Community and something. So much of our conversation about poverty is about what we are seeing destroyed, what we need to protect as if our entire stock of social capital was created at the beginning of time and our job is to nourish it, make sure we dont lose it. But were always doing stupid things, destroying our inheritance. At the same time, were always building new things. The question is what are we building . How are we building it . What will it let douse . Not nearly enough Public Policy thinks about the role government can play in creating the space for social capital like that to be built in a positive nourishing way. Too often we think about how to manage this process rather than how to nourish the circumstances that let it happen and were no good at it. This is not a left right division. This is easily the most bipartisan fact about social policy at the National Level is that everybody agrees about the wrong question and the question is how do we manage this problem so that we can so that it can be diminished. What were hearing today that a part of the question we have to ask is how do we nourish that space so people who want to sofl these problems and who exist at the level of the problem who are meeting it face to face hand in hand can have a chance, can have a shot and so i think that does require us not to think about scaling up in a usual way, not sotosee what all of you are doing and think how can we turn that into a Government Program that would achieve this for everybody. The intentions are good. The problem is not the intentions. Obviously there are situations where the problem is the intention. There is a kind of poverty industry. I think thats true. There are also a lot of very wellmeaning people who are going about trying to solve these problems in a misguided way. And trying to figure out mototake what youre doing and manage it at a National Level when we should be figuring out how to create the space for people to arise out of these communities. All kinds of communities that need help and help one another. Im not saying i have the answer to that. I just think thats the question and were not even asking that question. Before fred speaks, id like to well, i think the token nonph. D. Holder on this panel [ laughter ] i have a few honoraries, though. Whatever my college was for free speech, they gave me another one. But i am the token media member here on the panel. And those are Great Questions to ask congressman ryan but i wanted to get to what i came over to him. I wanted to ask him why hes not running for president because ive been following him around as hes been with under bob woodsons guidance hire doing a great job of going out and doing something i havent seen anybody do since jack kemp. Thats go out there and before you start telling people what youre going to tell them, listen to them. Find out whats on their minds. How are they dealing with these problems . How are they going out into Civil Society in that edmond burkian sense to me is real conservatism. Shows you how old i am. But developing Civil Society, the church, school, institutions out there bob woodson opened my eyes in the 80s when i was despairing in chicago of the insurmountable problems weve got and in any case before i go on too long is one thing about bob what abraham maslow, if the only tool you have is a hammer all problems look like nails and i am immensely frustrated as a long time political social journalist over how our language just fails us. Our language fails us in defining problems and diagnosing problems and coming up with answers. Its true of our political language. I am of a mind that i, too, think about scaling up and replicating the wonderful programs and policies that ive seen in action on the grassroots but its difficult if conventional journalism, an old mentor of mine said news is what happens when things arent going the way theyre supposed to. So as a result those kids, millions of kids who are not drug addicted, they arent news. The millions who arent in gangs arent news. People like kimmy gray who had the honor to know before she passed over there sending hundreds of kids to college out of the kennel worth park side. Thats not news. Thats a nice metro story in the neighborhood section and its as nice as kidding getting on the bus going to college, itself. This is what i live with everyday. I love ideas, i love something new, a new idea that is showing some promise of actually working. But when it does work, its not news. You tell your city editor, well, how many died throughout . Out there . Well, im not. This works. Were much too cynical in the News Business to believe any program really works. There must be corruption there somewhere and in any case i would like to see paul ryan or somebody else ready to championship. Im hoping jack kemp could do it in 96 as a running mate but unfortunately the way our campaigns are set up now, if you have a good idea as a Vice President , who cares . Youre supposed to be over there to fill in on the engagements where the top of the ticket cant appear. Theres a a suppression of possible ideas that are outside of the normal matrixes that weve set up on the political right and the political left. Is so i would like to see in some way that well, this is constantly a sis fissian task that i try to put stories out there and generate public conversations about them. It would be easier if Civil Society had its donald trump its candidate is who is out to promote not just themselves but some real ideas that need to be talked about. The other day my buddy chuck todd said you know, love him or hate him, hes got us talking about immigration. And at the newspaper where i work someone in editorial said the same thing. Well, other politicians dont want to talk about it, democratic or republican, they dont want to talk about it, certainly none on the republican side because it dwietivides the party. If it divides the party, you dont talk about it. Its still a problem. The same thing when were talking about our cities and certainly in chicago weve had enough grassroots problems to deal with lately. Same thing here in washington. Ive seen some terrific people doing terrific things to Violence Reduction programs, various Education Programs to drug addiction programs, etc. And a real honest debate about this will come when weve got people ready to champion the issues and im waiting to see that happen. Maybe four years. Im at the age where ill say well, next four years. Meanwhile things can go wrong in four years. So thank you for let megaramble. I look forward to more discussion. One thing. I think youre right about the traditional media that editors are interested in the bad news. If i may raise the evil of social media, though, in the context of print journalism. I think one of the things that the opportunity lives series has indicated is that and we heard in the the earlier panel. As much as the press only wants to tell the bad news, people are thirsty for good news and the popularity of the tapes that were made that you all participated in, the fact that so many people have tuned in, it is the first time and bob and i have talked about that and obviously a number of us have talked about this. The difficulty has always been in academic prose or written prose, how do we tell your stories . The problem was converted stories into print. But with social media we have a new way of telling the story. It sounds simple but claire burns has become an expert at taking your stories and telling them in a compelling way with content. Having rewatched these tapes yesterday its not just inspiring pictures. Theres real content to what you say. You all describe in some detail your approach and capacity to change peoples lives in a very thoughtful way. I think as an intermediate platform between what we deal with in terms of written scholarship and the stories themselves i think we have a whole new way of conveying the good news. Im glad you mentioned that. Social media, i keep forgetting being a 209 century guy that i am. This is why we have kids. I tell my son this is your century. Im just lucky to be around. But im learning to love twitte twitter. Ive seen what can happen in the last few years. The Tea Party Movement rose largely because of social media. Occupy wall street on the left rose largely because of social media. Ideas now people and like you said there are a lot of people who want good news, they want hopeful news. They want news that show there iss an avenue that has prescriptions not just a lot of announcements of symptoms. And i dont know where this is going but i want to live long enough to watch and be part of it. Were just beginning to learn the value of social media for this sort of thing to raise the profile of folks like this. Professor . A couple things. I want to start off with pastor soares talking about caterpillars and butterflies. An army of cat billeerpillars v and votes very effectively. Fantastic polarization is taking place between urban america and suburban america and part is based on the fact that in the big city like new york, you get an 85 vote for one candidate as opposed to another. It creates a very difficult situation. As to what glen was talking about about materialism. I think thats right. And its not just marxist. Its libertarians on the right, marxists on the left are both stout earlists who simply dont deal with the underlying spiritual moral dimension of life. And the fact is if you get the mechanisms in place, Everything Else follows. I think theyre just wrong. And yes this is all political. But its not just the question of people being pawns. If you asked what organization was most important for the election of president obama in 2008 it would have been the sciu Service Employees International Union and the president of that union whose name ive just blanked on, im sorry, said to a friend of mine were the most powerful Political Force in the country. We the Public Sector unions. Hes right they were and are. But this polarization, ill stop with this polarization question. We are so fantastically polarized, we havent been this polarized since 1896. I know im an historian and these things seem obvious to me and not others. 1896 was the year William Jennings bryant ran against mckinley. Mckinley carried the cities, he carried the developed areas, the country, bryant carried populist rural america. And the polarization was utterly dramatic. By the way, if anyone tells you that somebody like my mayor bill de blasio, is a populist, theyre telling you you dont know what words mean. [ laughter ] bill de blasio is a statist. In terms of pop youism will, popular support, de blasio won in a landslide according to some of my friends in the New York Times. Some of the dumbest people ive ever met. He won with the smallest percentage of the vote since women got the right to vote in 1919. That was the landslide. Populism means that its not a useful term anymore. Whether the left of right. It might work a little bit of the tea party but it doesnt work very well. Let me say one thing to clarence about twitter. My youngest son who is among other things an army ranger, did an article for daily beast on twitter fascism. He didnt mean this sarcastically, hes talking about the people behind this hideous character darren roof . The guy in south korea zblk dca . Dylann roof. Dylann roof. He had been following fascist not fascism like you tell your parents theyre fascists because they have to go to bed. Hed been following their web sites on reddit. I dont know what reddit is but thats what children are for. They tell me its important so i accept it. This was serious. He was deeply interested in fascism and the triumph and possible triumph of fascism based on race war. Thats part of why he did what he did. So its to reduce our collective intelligence because ideas which have long serious histories get to reduced to comic book characters and this is n isnt a left or right question. Anyone ill stop with this. When people were marching in new york about police brutality, i went out the ask them lets talk about this, do you know how many people in new york were killed by policemen now as opposed to 1990 . Well, its about onesixth now, theres been a very sharp reduction. The response i got was who cares . This is not about evidence, this is about ideology. This polarization produced readymade ideologies people put on and it becomes their persona. Its who they are. Anyway, this is very dreary and i [ laughter ] well the good side of it, though, is that twitter is a tool and youve got a dark side and a bright side and, yeah, the dark side is that people of all types can connect with each other now, including disenchanted young men, which is another issue we havent talked about today but which you grassroots folks are dealing with out there of young men in particular now who are drifting off in many different ways like this dylann roof. But we are in an era of flash mob politics, which i call it, which means issues and leadership and movement cans pop up overnight. We have that ability so we need to get in front of it and use it for positive good. I think glen raised a critical question around religion because all of these testimonies are explicitly religious. But if you peel away any of these models youll hear an argument that for us relidge john a means and not an end. If somebody else comes up with a means that is as effective as religion, welcome to the party. The problem we have is that i think the religious right hijacks so much of the language. You talk about language. It hijacks the language so when you say morality theres a religious construct that comes to mind because of the moral majority, et cetera. But there is a moral consensus required for Civil Society. And if you dont a moral consensus then everybody will steal all of us will leave here with a chair. Because theres no security. The assumption of the american model is that we can not control behavior but that rather we buy into a moral consensus. Otherwise youd have a cop in every classroom. The assumption is that if im driving and the light turns red ill stop. And when i buy into that, im a part of Civil Society. For us, religion is what helps people come to those conclusions and and so omar does not talk about success in terms of producing clients, he talks about success of producing citizens. His language embraces the idea that theres something bigger than a church member. Hes not just trying to get church members, hes trying to yes create citizens and a part of that model includes i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god. And thats where this movement, i think can strike a chord if it can use these digital platforms to get into the hearts of people that already agree. As deon said, this is a heart thing. Its interesting. I think youre exactly delight the so much of the language of morality and virtue has been kidnapped and incorporated into the political dialogue as a weapon rather than right. I mean, what everyone here is talking about is recreating vir view. And as yuval points out, its not something we got a big store of in the beginning of the republic and weve been living off it ever since. A lot of the discussion sounds like that, right . Once youve abandoned certain principles, once youve abandoned certain institutions you lose ground and you only lose ground and all you can do is defend the receding borders of the familiar and old institutions. But what these folks have done is recreate Civil Society, reinstitute virtue. The matter the founsers principles that we all talk about intellectually and in the scholarly way, those principles are absolutely vital for resurrecting lives. I mean, this is an extraordinary thing in a way and as you say pastor, its producing citizens not in just some economically productive fashion but people who are imbued with virtue. Imbued with a commitment to Civil Society and the American Experience which is really an extraordinary thing, i think. But anyway, so congressman ryan as you know proposed i think it was called opportunity grants which was a way of collapsing a lot of categorical funding into a voucher that could then i know the fuvoucher is a bad wor. But that could be taken to any group that appeals to the person who is in gleed and who is seeking some help. In other words, cashing out categorical programs, putting it into a voucher and taking it to groups not unlike these that weve heard from today. Heres my question. Is that a good idea or are there other ways of bring iing the ids weve heard about, the experiences weve heard about into the practice of Public Policy. That seems to be the and bearing in mind that its a politically fraught exercise for all the reasons that professor siegel was talking about and that glen lowery was talking about. Is this the ultimate goal we should be working toward or are there other things we can do . Lets suppose we reduce taxes. People would have more to more incentive to give to charity, to give on their own without having all this pass through the ambits of the government. Lower taxes, more disposable income, more Charitable Giving, more Civil Society. The trouble with the kind of idea that congressman ryan presented is in parts of the country this would have some positive benefits. In other parts of the country, like big cities, it would simply get ground into the go into the meat grinder and come out as the same old bologna. I thought it was a great idea until i wrote about it and then my readers told me whats the matter with you . [ laughter ] but thats part of the process, right . Everybody agrees on nothing but we all have some areas in the middle. I think your idea of a tax cut so that people have more money for charity is a good idea but folks on the other side would say well that money will just be dispersed into all kinds of different places and one way to direct that money toward a desirable end would be a voucher or something which would be specifically targeted to a certain end. These are political questions. These are questions where you try to work up to a consensus but i have found that i thought paul could have done a better sales job on it with the public because anything he says now because hes paul ryan folks on the left will say well, he just wants to cut spending and this is another sneaky way to do it. So it will be more of an uphill climb for him. But its an uphill climb i want you guys to keep talking but i want you to be cognizant of the gap between this political conversation which is real and the lack of politics discussed by the three of you. No one talked about the mayor, the city council, the district. No one. The word politics never came up and now politics drives this conversation. I just want to point that out. Is that good or bad . Its just real. [ laughter ] its real im the comoderator. Its one thing to have policy, its another thing to implement that policy and thats where politics gets in. Thats my whole lecture. Since were on the politics train i might as well take it on to the full conclusion. You mentioned voucher and youre right. Immediately you say it, its a bad term. Yet the largest Voucher Program in america is called section 8 and very few people want to get rid of that. Its called the housing Voucher Program. So theres importance in language. I would support the concept of the fact if youre taking federal money, giving it to people where it matters, where they live. Id say as an administrator i think there should be some rules and regulations in place. Regulations arent always bad. Overregulation is a problem. But i want to make sure taxpayer dollars are being invested properly. But i think we could learn from hearing all of you today. A lot of governors where you can influence policy per say because youre not a paid lobbyist or where you can influence per say a mayor because youre not on his or her pac, where you can make a difference at the gubernatorial level is they often have governors cabinets for family and children. When i worked for governor rick scott in florida we had one. We would have meetings across the state. Great opportunity for people to say my name is gerard robinson, i live the district, heres a recommendation for you. Because you have Department Heads from education, law, social science, frankly, we dont always get together at the same time but heres a way for us to walk outside of our own lane. So thats something i would say at the local level. Take advantage of those gubernatorial cabinets because we dont you have been hear enough voices there. I think part of the sorry, go ahead. Ill be brief. On the voucher question i want too sound a cautionary note. Unintended consequences. Once millions of people are carrying around billions of dollars worth of voucher, its going to attract people who want to provide those services then the need to regularize, to regulate, make sure that those Service Providers so next thing you know the federal government is in the business of monitoring, standardizing, whatever and im not trying to predict anything. Its not a bad thing. Well, it might kill you know it well, let me just you know what the constitutional arguments will be about giving money to religious things and so on and so forth . So now you have to stand back from the thing that made your program work in order to satisfy federal regulators. And they call a pell grant going to georgetown. I think part of the problem is that one reason for the Great Success weve heard about today that the work being done is lapping at a scale that is a human scale. And thats one reason why youre always short of money but its also one reason why what youre doing works. And in trying to solve that problem, you want to make sure you dont destroy what works and theres a problem with going to scale. Going to scale means youre not at the scale with people youre trying to help. Youre not standing in front of them saying i understand your problem and heres what i would do and heres why. Youre saying this is what the rules say i can give you and here it is. Theres a reason for that. Generally speaking a wellintentioned reason. People are looking at successful things and someone here said before in the Previous Panel he wishes he had a Printing Press to print money. Well, the president has that Printing Press and and theres limits to it but he puts his name on a budget every year. Thats a 4 trillion budget. And thinks surely we can help people like you do what you do. I think its a question whether that is true or false. Is its important to make sure that in helping you dont change the fundamental character of the programs that exist in such a way they dont work anymore. I think ryans attempt to make this bottom up, to allow it to support things at the scale in which theyre happening makes sense as an attempt to solve that problem. But glen is right, at the end of the day if youre spending hundreds of millions of dollars that way, somebody will say well, how do we know where its going . How do we know if its working . Before you know it the rules are written to make sure of that and youre back where you started. Its not an easy problem to solve. Let me put this, then, in the most sort of radical form. I think that i heard, again and again from the groups that we were throng that there is at the heart of these programs a human relationship and thats way too bland a term to describe the intense bond that forms between folks that are working here and the folks that are working. This is an incredibly close human relationship the that has its many varieties and forms as the people theyre working with. Almost every one of these relationships as pastor shirley says, you tailor a plan for each person that youre working with. Does that just simply automatically rule out any kind of useful intervention by government . Question number one. And question number two, going to an area that im a little more familiar with, is there nonetheless a role for philanthropy and private Charitable Giving on a large scale . We think of Charitable Giving as 10 for united way but we have some fairly substantially wealthy donors who are giving a lot of money to nonprofit organizations that are almost indistinguishable in form and results from government, right . I mean, not to name any of them but im sure they come to mind. Myway, is it are we talking about an insurmountable gulf here between government and are there other ways within the private sector to actually bridge this gap . Im very optimistic about both the private sector and government if you keep government properly reined in. One thing philanthropies are very good on the accountability question. They give money and take chances but they also are tend to keep better track of that, in my experience, than Government Agencies do. Very often we dont hear about it as far as government money is concerned until the u. S. Attorney steps in. And somebody should have gotten to this sooner than that. People knew there were things going wrong but the communication, the accountability and all of that broke down. With philanthropies thats much less likely to happen in my experience. Secondly i think that government has a problem with exability. You may have an idea well, for example, Public Housing just for one unlick housing great idea initially and then it turned out the highrise Public Housing was wonderful for seniors and terrible for families. And so we had to learn the hard way there. But somebody has to come along and i thought wed never get rid of Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green in chicago. But we did and it happened and there was more cooperation between president bush and mayor daly, or richard ii, as we call him, than there was between bill Clintons Administration and and the chicago city hall. But it got done. Unfortunately, after these highrises were torn down the street gangs were dispersed throughout communities and took Drug Trafficking and guns with them. The elder gang bangers were in prison so it was just anarchy on the streets and were still living with the high homicide surge as a result of that. So unintended consequences. This is one of the big problems with Government Programs but it doesnt mean you should not try to house people. It just means you change the program. Maybe housing vouchers work better than highrises, for example, for families. But im optimistic on the hole. I find the best programs tend to be Public Private partnerships where you mix Corporate Philanthropy and government together and they keep an eye on each other. Let me throw in a ward of caution about philanthropies. Bat more so the home of several three very large philanthropies. Its also the center of innumerable experiments in urban reform since the Great Society and its also the center of is one failure in the nonpolitical sense after another. Those philanthropies were just as unaccountable as government. It turned out that it went from failure to failure. Sometimes not criminally but right on the edge of criminally. Not intentionally. Not because the people were mean characters, just because in order to get things done in Baltimore Baltimore is the only city ive ever been in where i went to a highend party and there were drug dealers at the party. This is before the wire by the way. So finally i just want to say part of the reason the that pastors are so important in terms of citizenship is that we having . The country which i dont think people recognize and thats not just people not being religious but a kind of neopaganism which is especially prevalent in the big cities and you can go aa long way with many aspects of neopaganism. Late term abortion has elements in neo et cetera, et cetera. But whatever neopaganism does, it doesnt produce citizens. And without citizens its very hard to see how we have a United States of america. Please. So breaux omar mentioned you have a contract with k12 so theres a Public Private Partnership Working there. I think pastor paul mentioned people at your church are investing money, probably giving away too many bunk beds but still investing money. The sister here had mentioned shes getting money in different places. There is a role that already exists for Public Private partnerships. The one thing i would like to add is the role of venture capitalists because there are venture capitalists who can see what you have not only to make profit but create the general election generation of prophets, its just marketed in a different way. Pastor soares is his church in new jersey is a prime example of how an effect i have Grassroots Group can take government money and do good things with it, make government look really good if the course of that. And pay it back, by the way. Yes, right, sure. But, you know, it i think one thing thats clear for all of us is that there isnt that kind of hard core libertarian objection to Government Programs as such. You know on the philanthropy question, what what surprises me is we have near most effective grassroots leaders in the country and i bet you could count on the fingers of one hand the numbers of foundations that have been involved with them, right . And as you pointed out, professor siegel, there are dont put it that way. [ laughter ] but there are many, many foundations. There are hundreds of well, there are a lot of foundations in the country. Many of modest means. Many of which could simply locate a Grassroots Group could go to pastor shirley and say pastor shirley, ive heard about your work, im going to write you a check for 25,000. By the way, i want to be in touch with you. I want to talk to you about who else in your youre talking about the replication program. I want to talk to you, pastor shirley. Who else in your community is doing work not exactly like yours because no one does anything exactly like you. But that operating on similar principle, getting similar results, maybe in a slightly different areas but the same general idea. I bet you know those people. I bet you could say let me give you the names of three people. I will take you to meet these folks, you can hold me responsible for their performance and integrity. But the foundations dont call. They call the political leaders. Coming back to glens point. When i was in State Government in new jersey and all the headlines covered the children in foster care who were dying, one of your foundations in baltimore called the governor and today the governor we want to help you. You direct us to the people that you think we should fund and work with. Well, 99 out of 1 4ur00 times t politician is going to feed it Political Organization before it looks for effective organizations. Exactly. And just to underline that, there is no legal reason why that should be the case. Right . Foundations have almost complete freedom to do whatever they want to do as long as its giving money to a c3 that can certify theyre a c3 yet they follow the same steal patterns that have been trod so many times. Its not that they follow them. In many ways they create them. Exactly. I pointed out the difference between the political conversation here and the nonpolitical conversation there to indicate that as long as that gap exists it is going to be missing resources theyre going to be lack of ability to either scale up or at least spread out because they are formal and informal political systems that impact all of what these anecdotal kind of reports have revealed and until and thats why my work with paul was so important that paul ryan would not just go himself but then establish a model for policymakers to cross the divide and begin to see the other side of their policies and how theyre affected. I think that model which has now been embraced, i think bob must have couple dozen requests from members of congress to do for them what he did for paul. So i do think this is potential to at least spread this thing out and to create some replication if not upscaling. Right. Every one of those congressmen have wealthy supporters back home who have charitable budgets negotiation their political budgets and chances are theyre riding their charitable checks to nonprofit organizations that are coming to washington to lobby for more federal spending. Thats the theyre cancelling out their political spending with their charitable spending. I should add, speaking for of the center for neighborhood enterprise, when that wealthy person looks for grassroots leaders to write checks to, the first check should go to the center for neighborhood enterprise these are the ones who that have introduced us all to this approach. Pastor omar wants to ask a questio question. A question and more of a comment question i think. But you just said what i was about to say is and i appreciate that. I dont want when it comes down to whether the government plays a role, i dont want to get i dont want us to let government off the hook in just saying its the anecdotal, it will be hard to scale up. Yall think of a way. [ laughter ] because as fun and as entertaining and wonderful as i can make it seem to get one, somebody else is producing four or five million lil waynes. What im saying is someone else has a system to replicate that at a level that just just throwing one in at a time cannot compete with. You have to have people who are intentionally saying lets challenge, fix, try, do demonstration demonstrations thought provoking ideas, stuff that makes it possible for us to scale. Even if we scale and its a light beer version of a regular beer. At least it will be better than what we have because we all know and some of us who have been in this for a minute we know when grants are written for people. We already know there aint rope for us. So we look at that and we know i aint gonna get that. We understood when we got the grant proposal from the government. We know when the when there is catch language that has i remember when it was wrap around service. I remember when it was formerly incarcerat incarcerated. I remember when it was folks need to be incarcerated. [ laughter ] and the Government Fund a way to systematically push that idea and fund it to the point to where those who are on the on their particular side of the issue could be funding. But for us what we are saying is that and im real serious and i want yall to but you just said so i guess its late, but i really want you to understand that what we are saying is, and im being very serious, i dont think bobs calls has gotten a shot. Straight up. I hate to be this real i may not be invited back but since im here now, i dont think it has gotten the shot to be, to fail. Because we could be wrong. Youre right. But we have not gotten a platform to see on a scalable level can this work, and if you never get that opportunity, well always be in the bushes hiding behind, you know, trying to do it in the backyard, cooking up moonshine, trying to figure it out, as opposed to being on the front, and it takes, and it takes some governmental agencies to say what were saying privately. Umhum. So i just want to say that. Yes, bob . Just to what hes saying, that the challenge that we have faced over the years is fundamental elitism, from the left and the right and that is, truth has to be closed in prophecy, otherwise its not heard. Most people left and right of center look down their noses at what we do and the people we serve. And it is a myth that, when you elect a republican governor, my experience in that conservatives do not know how to administer conservative policy into implementation, so if you go to any Welfare Office in a state run by a democrat or republicans, you will see money going to the same people, and so thats why it is important for those of you who have, leaders to do what paul is doing, so go and listen and learn to try to find out how that can change, how the lessons that theres just not nice stories of nice people doing good things to some nice people, and we just pat them on the head, thank them, and hope theyll just go away. They need to understand that the kind of healing that has changed and transformed the brokenness in the midst of these crimeridden, druginfested neighborhoods, that perhaps they have solutions to the emptiness being experienced by people who are starving morally in the gilded ghettos of wealthy communities, because if people can find remedies in the midst of this despair, then maybe they can also help people that have better or more means, and so to me, it is the brokenness, you know, richard wyches book fables of fortune what people have that you dont want. Thats an important book. Richard demonstrates emptiness knows no limit, and that the real bridge isiss culturally if was wealthy and my son was starving i would sent my son to he didnt get it. He doesnt understand that he has a problem, but nevertheless, those of you who are educated, need to understand that all of us have got something to learn. It must be horrible to be rich and empty, because at least youre poor, you can fantasize that if only i had money all of this stuff would be [ laughter ] but if you have all of the resources and you still feel empty, then the only answer is drugs or suicide, and so im hoping that this forum that you know, it isnt really low income, Practical Knowledge versus theoretical knowledge. The challenge that i have, my learned colleagues and people with money, can you learn to be on tap but not always on top . Are you willing to come and submit yourselves to be used the way reed holt has a businessman, the treasurer of at lan Bradley Foundation company, when he came to one of our gang conferences and sat and listened all day and his life has been transformed as a result. I remember him giving a lift to one of our grassroots natives from parker, and he says the first time i ever rode in a car with a white man that i wasnt going to jail. When we are able to bring people together across the cultural, racial divide, where the common denominator is supporting redemption and transformation, i think america has a chance, at real redemption of transformation but somehow weve got to bring people like you together with the kind of panelists that we saw so that we can come together and redefine it. We have the brandmire family, wonderful people who just started supporting us, they flew here from kansas just for this session. They came earlier and flew in to busters and spent a whole day taking a kind of tour that paul did, trying to find out how can some of the blessings that god has given them, how can it be used more effectively to serve him, and so these are the kind of people i do have something to say. I think, ive only been wealthy since 08. We have eight children, 30 grandchildren, married 57 years, struggled through a business, went bankrupt, came back, then built a business where we developed products that reduced hospital related bloodstream infections by 70 . We had a patent on it until 2016 so it made it very valuable product with the mrsa. Okay, so i in that time though i know many wealthy people, and i know many wealthy people who are giving back. The problem is, theyre giving back to infrastructure. Theyre doing exactly, when i heard bob say this, i was like oh my this is whats happening. Theyre giving 70 cents to infrastructure and 30 cents to the core, and in our little thing that were doing, we have a rec center that we started so we really wanted to investigate and say how can we make this rec center, and wed like to do, working on revitalization plan for i grew up in a mixed neighborhood. I was really poor most of my life, single mother, very and thought that was just, i mean i was ashamed of that. Now