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Transcripts For CSPAN3 Public Investment Policies 20170119 :
Transcripts For CSPAN3 Public Investment Policies 20170119 :
CSPAN3 Public Investment Policies January 19, 2017
Were going to start our panel because were rushed for time. Im pleased to have ted mccann from the house of representatives. Bob greenstein, and bob doar from ai next door. Now well talk about a way more about the practical issues associated with implementation. I want to start with a big picture. We expect the whole morning talking about the evidence and
Academic Studies
and the effects of policies. You know, this would have been a reasonable question, i think a year ago, and two years ago. I think we feel like its an even more important question now. Does evidence matter to the political process . Did these studies have an effect . If so, how . Im going to take all of your i think it matters a lot. I think that in my experience in new york and new york state and new york city, we paid attention to evidence. We paid attention to outcomes. It had an effect on how you do your debate. You do have to be careful about overstating the evidence, and you cant oversell. And i think you also have to know your audience. I think that when looking at this sort of data about investments and
Human Capital
, i think the best finding concerns medicaid, maybe medicaid behind that. Im not so sure its so strong in cash. When you go in and talk to people who have particular view point, and here ill talk about my friends republican, theyre going to want to hear about employment effects. Theyre not going to want it to be dismissed as unimportant. It really matters. And theyre going to want to hear the truth about that. And theyre also going to want to hear the extent to which these necessities of investing in
Human Capital
is driven by an absence of another parent, for instance, or issue of single parenthood. You cant just write a series of papers and make a statement about investing in new capital for
Young Children
and only talk about poverty and race and not also talk about single parent. I do think it matters a lot. I think the speaker in his better way proposal that was referenced mentioned evidence. Certainly the hottest republican election in to some people in town was todd young in indiana. Payforperformance guy. I think people want to start with the premise that, in the new world we live in now, evidence doesnt matter. Certainly arent helping their case. Whats your take . Well, if i didnt think evidence mattered at all, none of us up here would be doing what we do. Having said that, i think my take is a lot less sanguine than roberts. I think evidence can matter a lot when decisions are being made in a nonpolitically polarized atmosphere. But when an issue has a lot of
Politics Around
it, you can find members simultaneously talking about evidence basing, and then in the same statement, or the same document, making statements that are actually contrary to the evidence. A couple of examples, you know, of things that bother me now. We continue to have members of congress and others say as though this was based on evidence, that any poverty programs are a failure because the poverty rate is the same today as it was in the 60s. When every reputable analyst knows that that comparison is based on the official poverty measure that doesnt count hardly any of the programs that are expanded, because theyre generally noncash, and that theres broad agreement among analysts that poverty measures, particularly when youre doing historical comparisons, should count the noncash benefits. And when you do, theres a big reduction in poverty. Weve had hearings on the hill. I was in one where there were two republican and one democratic witnesses. And the witnesses echoed each other. But when youre doing historical comparison, you cant use the official measure or youll get misleading results. Members in the room and heard this disagreement within days were repeating the line, everything failed, the poverty rate didnt go down. One more example. If you look at a lot of the discussions on will hill, there was an earlier panel, i think it was greg and kristen were talking about how much of policy discussions were in the context of perceived labor supply, labor market, and the like. And theres a particular line you hear over and over again in policy discussions that people in large numbers face 80 marginal tax rates and worse off if they take a job. We have a cbo study that came out a year and a half ago that said the median marginal tax rate is 14 on people below half poverty, and three times the poverty line, 34 between 1 and 1 1 2 times the poverty line. We did an extensive analysis, but how do you get to 80 . There are people who face 80 rates. But you have to be in a narrow income range and get atypical combination of benefits. It turns out that about 3 of singleparent families with kids could be subject to something in the 80 range. Doesnt matter. The data is out there. It keeps being repeated as though this is the norm. So i think where we run into challenges, or the data are the evidence, dont support an etiologically held position or arent helpful in a polarized political fight. I think our big challenge is how do we bring evidence basing even into those kinds of debates. A response . Well, i guess ill talk more broadly in the political process. I think actually we do use evidence fairly regularly in the political process. I think youve seen speaker, and then senator murray move forward with the commission on evidencebased policy. We mentioned senator young. Talking about pay for success. Whenever ive been in the room trying to figure out how to move politics forward, even when its republican, democrat, negotiate things out. Typically theres a conversation about what the correct policy is. There are political conversations going on at the same time but its not a conversation devoid of what we think the best policy is. Its a conversation based on the political reality, and then combined with what the best policy
Going Forward
we think should be joint. And getting an agreement on what the evidence shows. The evidence is mixed. And folks, you cant really come down on one side or the other side. Folks retreat to their priors, and end up arguing from probably more political point of view. But again, thats just part of living in a messy world. Go ahead. I would just say that on the first example that bob gave, most of the time when im in the room and that statement is made, its always with the proviso that we have
Material Hardship
when properly measured with poverty, but havent yet achieved a goal where people are earning their own ability to rise above poverty. Thats not just a political statement. I think there are americans who care about having people get out of poverty so that they at the end of the day dont need the itc or food stamps or value of
Public Health
insurance to provide the difference between what they earn or make on their own and the poverty line. I acknowledge that that, you know, political statement we both have on both sides egregious behavior by politicians who sometimes say things that arent quite right. But that one is a little more complicated because people do aspire to having the poverty measure be achieved without transfer payments. I have to disagree. Robert, what you said is fine, but in most public debates, you look at various members of congress and others on sunday talk shows and the like, they do not express it more often than not that you just mentioned. It is used as an emblem and evidence that many poverty programs have failed and we should radically change them. That is the most common rhetoric. It didnt move the needle. Very common statement. It shows were doing things wrong and current things dont work. Except the same people say the welfare reform was a success. Im not getting into the welfare well, the welfare i think we can agree the evidence i think we can probably argue different poverty measures show different things. We can agree with that. And the consumption based poverty measure which we do not have at the moment. Anyway, these things but what people say in public and in the back room is different. I worry about the disservice done, like we know the facts, but then were playing politics all the time. Is there anything that academics, or think tanks could do better to try to get, you know, more agreement, where the evidence is like everybody sort of agrees on the basic facts. Theres another problem here. Im not sure what think tanks should do about it. I think everyone on the panel would agree that on a lot of complicated issues, im getting away from poverty measurement and research on impacts, on a lot of issues there are multiple studies, and they sometimes go in different directions. If there are five studies and four go in one direction and the other goes in the other, it is not uncommon in this town for people for whom the one that goes in their direction, they cite only that one and they dont tell you the other four exist. And then, hey,
Evidence Base
d. Heres the study. So i dont know how one achieves the following goal, but there ought to be a norm, increasingly common term these days, there ought to be a norm that when were discussing an issue on which theres research and evidence, that if various pieces of research go in various different directions, its perfectly fine for someone to say why they think a study or studies are the best ones. But you need to inform your audience of the studies that go the other way. And if you think theyre wrong or not as solid, why you think that. But what should be viewed with suspicion is anytime there are multiple studies, if someone cherrypicks one and doesnt tell you about the others, if theyre quality studies that go in the other direction, to me, thats not
Evidence Base
d. I dont think you can argue with that. I think thats a good aspect to look at the full array of studies. I think its also important when citing the studies to be really clear about the findings. And the margins between finding that shows the
Significant Impact
or not. I think sometimes in town people have a tendency to say, the evidence suggests, or the evidence shows, or theres a lot of evidence that proves, and then when you look beneath that and find that really the difference in the outcome wasnt that great, and it was as bob said there may be a couple other studies that showed something different. I think that when that happens, at least in my limited experience here in town, when that credibility problem comes into effect, it undermines the whole finding. And you dont want to do that. You want to be clear about the caveats and the extent to which whatever intervention, especially in poverty policy, had an impact, maybe it wasnt quite as big as you want to pretend it was. I also would say one other thing. And that is that we cant underestimate the prevailing economic forces at work in the country that are sometimes more important. Or appear to be more important. Especially in poverty. In that sometimes theres you had a question, you said to us, well, why doesnt everybody talk about this when all they want to talk about is scoring, dynamic scoring. And i said, because i thought it was because people are worried about the overall economy as much as they are worried about a particular intervention in poverty. I think that has to be considered. So well move on from that a little bit. The next question is, the thing we try to talk about today, was to sort of bring bunches of different kinds of policies together, because we think really these are policies that are actually have the potential to be investments. We all want to raise future growth. Were worried about creativity, worried about supporting medicare and social security. Things that we think its a good time to make investments with the
Interest Rates
so low. Is that something that politicians actually care about, what happens if 10, 20 years down the road from something, that you have to make the case that its jobs or all about labor market struf . I think politicians care a lot about that. We just passed the 21st century cures, seeing down the road benefits from reducing diseases. So i think when theyre talking about the aca, theres a lot of conversation about prevention. I think thats something politicians considered fairly closely now. You do have the swearingin rules that dont really refer to capturing the conclusions. So going back to the evidence a little bit can we stick on growth for a moment . Yeah, we can stick on growth. Look, if youre a politician, you can be in either party and youre favoring a policy. It could be a tax policy, it could be a spending policy. More often than not, youll claim that your proposal will promote growth. These claims are so common. I would also argue that the standards that are used for claiming growth effects are not equal on the spending and the tax side. Almost any tax cut that anybody favors, could be in either party, is often claimed as producing growth. In most cases, claims well beyond the evidence. Whats interesting on the social program side, your paper i think does a great job of summarizing and synthesizing this. I find that even after the last five to ten years of research, which you captured so well, if im on capitol hill, and im not talking about republicans versus democrats here, its pretty much the case with all of them. There is a real lack of knowledge of the
Research Showing
some of the longterm positive effects on kids, for kids of certain kinds of
Program Interventions
as you discussed in your paper. Whereas among both parties, there are kind of assumptions often fairly evidencefree, or the evidence may come from a k street lobbying firm thats producing data to serve its clients, that whatever it is, the ax cutter tax break du jour will have a specific effect on growth. I would love to see somewhat more attention on the spending side. But for both of them, equally rigorous standards for what we know about growth effects, i think were a long way from that right now. So is there a role for a cbo here, for example, to be evaluating policies in the standard part of the tool kit, sort of saying, you know, we think this is likely to be growth enhancing, or not, how good an impact on distribution and join the tax together, for policies on the tax side and spending side . My view is, it would be useful for cbo to do this on both sides as analysis, and that cbo should do it on neither side for scoring. I dont favor dynamic scoring for taxes. Depending on the model that you choose, you get wildly differing results. I suspect 10 or 20 years from now based on whatever data we have then, we might be in a whole different ballpark than we are today. But my view is, we should get the best analysis we can of those effects on both taxes and spending. But i dont actually favor doing dynamic scoring on either side of the budget. I think it undercuts the solidity of the fiscal numbers. Would it make a big difference, do you think, in terms of what kinds of policies were enacted if there was some kind of score to it, or if there was some kind of standard analysis that people would look to . If you could find savings for a policy, that makes a big difference. In the window, you know, young kids 20 years down the road, theres no numbers way of really making it you can show that its going to save money and show that it will be overall net positive, it will be in the market favor. In terms of the political moving it, its very, very helpful to have a negative policy. Because then it could pay for some of the other things we would like to pay for. Thats the main reason we now have dynamic scoring on tax policies. It makes tax cuts easier to pass. You may its totally legitimate. Im not saying it is or isnt. But the main political motivation was to make tax cuts easier to pass. One of the things that you talked about was sort of like, we shouldnt oversell the research results. But as kristen mentioned, its really, really difficult to get, you know, solid, broad research, you know, you have to wait 30, 40 years, 50 years to know that these things really, really matter. But we get snippets of understanding that young, you know, the fetal situation matters a lot. Now, thats not the same as saying we have incredible evidence. But at the same time, you know, not doing policies while it may be incredibly helpful because we havent waited the 50 years to see, and it wont matter anymore, what should the bar be . How should evidence play in and how good does the evidence have to be for policy to be based on it . One of the big difficulties is if you create a
Government Program
its incredibly difficult to shut it down. I think thats one of the big issues that conservatives especially have. If we were to look at something that shows promise, but we would know if it didnt pan out, we could turn it off, or no longer continue the program, i think youd probably see a lot more willingness to take risks in this area. But i think generally, the thought is, well, if we do something, it doesnt work, its never going to end. And it will continue going on forever. I will just sort of add additional programs in the future. Are you weighing that probably it will work against the probability that right. Yeah. Sort of that general there are ways to evaluate the level of rigorousness of an evaluati evaluation. And there are technical ways of determining when you have a good study that does a very, you know, randomly controlled experiment that shows stronger studies. And we know what those are. And when you have have a good one, you want to go hard with it. Because you do want to appeal to the congress desire to make changes now that make life better for the future. What im worried about is when you have a close call, or when the caveats inside the study are actually pretty serious. And you dont explain those as you present the results. Then i think that undermines the entire exercise because there is a gotcha game here, and its not helpful when people say, well, actually, you didnt explain the detail there. Or you made it sound like the impact was really significant when it really wasnt. So thats all theres definitely a bar. I cant describe what it is. But what i would say is if you dont have it, dont say you do have it. I think another a couple of challenges here. Roberts point about that. I certainly agree that particularly where findings are not statistically significant, people shouldnt be presenting them as real findings. By the same token, we all know in the lowincome area, if you have an intervention in, lets say theres an improvement for kids or employment, whatever, im making it up, ten percentage points, the average person may say, that sounds very small. We know in the world of policy thats actually a big effect. We also have to help people with that. I think one of the really tough things is what happens when we have social science research, and policy makers draw, and the rest of us, draw policy conclusions from it, and then as the years go by, we get more research that sometimes actually goes in the opposite direction. Two examples. For years the
Academic Studies<\/a> and the effects of policies. You know, this would have been a reasonable question, i think a year ago, and two years ago. I think we feel like its an even more important question now. Does evidence matter to the political process . Did these studies have an effect . If so, how . Im going to take all of your i think it matters a lot. I think that in my experience in new york and new york state and new york city, we paid attention to evidence. We paid attention to outcomes. It had an effect on how you do your debate. You do have to be careful about overstating the evidence, and you cant oversell. And i think you also have to know your audience. I think that when looking at this sort of data about investments and
Human Capital<\/a>, i think the best finding concerns medicaid, maybe medicaid behind that. Im not so sure its so strong in cash. When you go in and talk to people who have particular view point, and here ill talk about my friends republican, theyre going to want to hear about employment effects. Theyre not going to want it to be dismissed as unimportant. It really matters. And theyre going to want to hear the truth about that. And theyre also going to want to hear the extent to which these necessities of investing in
Human Capital<\/a> is driven by an absence of another parent, for instance, or issue of single parenthood. You cant just write a series of papers and make a statement about investing in new capital for
Young Children<\/a> and only talk about poverty and race and not also talk about single parent. I do think it matters a lot. I think the speaker in his better way proposal that was referenced mentioned evidence. Certainly the hottest republican election in to some people in town was todd young in indiana. Payforperformance guy. I think people want to start with the premise that, in the new world we live in now, evidence doesnt matter. Certainly arent helping their case. Whats your take . Well, if i didnt think evidence mattered at all, none of us up here would be doing what we do. Having said that, i think my take is a lot less sanguine than roberts. I think evidence can matter a lot when decisions are being made in a nonpolitically polarized atmosphere. But when an issue has a lot of
Politics Around<\/a> it, you can find members simultaneously talking about evidence basing, and then in the same statement, or the same document, making statements that are actually contrary to the evidence. A couple of examples, you know, of things that bother me now. We continue to have members of congress and others say as though this was based on evidence, that any poverty programs are a failure because the poverty rate is the same today as it was in the 60s. When every reputable analyst knows that that comparison is based on the official poverty measure that doesnt count hardly any of the programs that are expanded, because theyre generally noncash, and that theres broad agreement among analysts that poverty measures, particularly when youre doing historical comparisons, should count the noncash benefits. And when you do, theres a big reduction in poverty. Weve had hearings on the hill. I was in one where there were two republican and one democratic witnesses. And the witnesses echoed each other. But when youre doing historical comparison, you cant use the official measure or youll get misleading results. Members in the room and heard this disagreement within days were repeating the line, everything failed, the poverty rate didnt go down. One more example. If you look at a lot of the discussions on will hill, there was an earlier panel, i think it was greg and kristen were talking about how much of policy discussions were in the context of perceived labor supply, labor market, and the like. And theres a particular line you hear over and over again in policy discussions that people in large numbers face 80 marginal tax rates and worse off if they take a job. We have a cbo study that came out a year and a half ago that said the median marginal tax rate is 14 on people below half poverty, and three times the poverty line, 34 between 1 and 1 1 2 times the poverty line. We did an extensive analysis, but how do you get to 80 . There are people who face 80 rates. But you have to be in a narrow income range and get atypical combination of benefits. It turns out that about 3 of singleparent families with kids could be subject to something in the 80 range. Doesnt matter. The data is out there. It keeps being repeated as though this is the norm. So i think where we run into challenges, or the data are the evidence, dont support an etiologically held position or arent helpful in a polarized political fight. I think our big challenge is how do we bring evidence basing even into those kinds of debates. A response . Well, i guess ill talk more broadly in the political process. I think actually we do use evidence fairly regularly in the political process. I think youve seen speaker, and then senator murray move forward with the commission on evidencebased policy. We mentioned senator young. Talking about pay for success. Whenever ive been in the room trying to figure out how to move politics forward, even when its republican, democrat, negotiate things out. Typically theres a conversation about what the correct policy is. There are political conversations going on at the same time but its not a conversation devoid of what we think the best policy is. Its a conversation based on the political reality, and then combined with what the best policy
Going Forward<\/a> we think should be joint. And getting an agreement on what the evidence shows. The evidence is mixed. And folks, you cant really come down on one side or the other side. Folks retreat to their priors, and end up arguing from probably more political point of view. But again, thats just part of living in a messy world. Go ahead. I would just say that on the first example that bob gave, most of the time when im in the room and that statement is made, its always with the proviso that we have
Material Hardship<\/a> when properly measured with poverty, but havent yet achieved a goal where people are earning their own ability to rise above poverty. Thats not just a political statement. I think there are americans who care about having people get out of poverty so that they at the end of the day dont need the itc or food stamps or value of
Public Health<\/a> insurance to provide the difference between what they earn or make on their own and the poverty line. I acknowledge that that, you know, political statement we both have on both sides egregious behavior by politicians who sometimes say things that arent quite right. But that one is a little more complicated because people do aspire to having the poverty measure be achieved without transfer payments. I have to disagree. Robert, what you said is fine, but in most public debates, you look at various members of congress and others on sunday talk shows and the like, they do not express it more often than not that you just mentioned. It is used as an emblem and evidence that many poverty programs have failed and we should radically change them. That is the most common rhetoric. It didnt move the needle. Very common statement. It shows were doing things wrong and current things dont work. Except the same people say the welfare reform was a success. Im not getting into the welfare well, the welfare i think we can agree the evidence i think we can probably argue different poverty measures show different things. We can agree with that. And the consumption based poverty measure which we do not have at the moment. Anyway, these things but what people say in public and in the back room is different. I worry about the disservice done, like we know the facts, but then were playing politics all the time. Is there anything that academics, or think tanks could do better to try to get, you know, more agreement, where the evidence is like everybody sort of agrees on the basic facts. Theres another problem here. Im not sure what think tanks should do about it. I think everyone on the panel would agree that on a lot of complicated issues, im getting away from poverty measurement and research on impacts, on a lot of issues there are multiple studies, and they sometimes go in different directions. If there are five studies and four go in one direction and the other goes in the other, it is not uncommon in this town for people for whom the one that goes in their direction, they cite only that one and they dont tell you the other four exist. And then, hey,
Evidence Base<\/a>d. Heres the study. So i dont know how one achieves the following goal, but there ought to be a norm, increasingly common term these days, there ought to be a norm that when were discussing an issue on which theres research and evidence, that if various pieces of research go in various different directions, its perfectly fine for someone to say why they think a study or studies are the best ones. But you need to inform your audience of the studies that go the other way. And if you think theyre wrong or not as solid, why you think that. But what should be viewed with suspicion is anytime there are multiple studies, if someone cherrypicks one and doesnt tell you about the others, if theyre quality studies that go in the other direction, to me, thats not
Evidence Base<\/a>d. I dont think you can argue with that. I think thats a good aspect to look at the full array of studies. I think its also important when citing the studies to be really clear about the findings. And the margins between finding that shows the
Significant Impact<\/a> or not. I think sometimes in town people have a tendency to say, the evidence suggests, or the evidence shows, or theres a lot of evidence that proves, and then when you look beneath that and find that really the difference in the outcome wasnt that great, and it was as bob said there may be a couple other studies that showed something different. I think that when that happens, at least in my limited experience here in town, when that credibility problem comes into effect, it undermines the whole finding. And you dont want to do that. You want to be clear about the caveats and the extent to which whatever intervention, especially in poverty policy, had an impact, maybe it wasnt quite as big as you want to pretend it was. I also would say one other thing. And that is that we cant underestimate the prevailing economic forces at work in the country that are sometimes more important. Or appear to be more important. Especially in poverty. In that sometimes theres you had a question, you said to us, well, why doesnt everybody talk about this when all they want to talk about is scoring, dynamic scoring. And i said, because i thought it was because people are worried about the overall economy as much as they are worried about a particular intervention in poverty. I think that has to be considered. So well move on from that a little bit. The next question is, the thing we try to talk about today, was to sort of bring bunches of different kinds of policies together, because we think really these are policies that are actually have the potential to be investments. We all want to raise future growth. Were worried about creativity, worried about supporting medicare and social security. Things that we think its a good time to make investments with the
Interest Rates<\/a> so low. Is that something that politicians actually care about, what happens if 10, 20 years down the road from something, that you have to make the case that its jobs or all about labor market struf . I think politicians care a lot about that. We just passed the 21st century cures, seeing down the road benefits from reducing diseases. So i think when theyre talking about the aca, theres a lot of conversation about prevention. I think thats something politicians considered fairly closely now. You do have the swearingin rules that dont really refer to capturing the conclusions. So going back to the evidence a little bit can we stick on growth for a moment . Yeah, we can stick on growth. Look, if youre a politician, you can be in either party and youre favoring a policy. It could be a tax policy, it could be a spending policy. More often than not, youll claim that your proposal will promote growth. These claims are so common. I would also argue that the standards that are used for claiming growth effects are not equal on the spending and the tax side. Almost any tax cut that anybody favors, could be in either party, is often claimed as producing growth. In most cases, claims well beyond the evidence. Whats interesting on the social program side, your paper i think does a great job of summarizing and synthesizing this. I find that even after the last five to ten years of research, which you captured so well, if im on capitol hill, and im not talking about republicans versus democrats here, its pretty much the case with all of them. There is a real lack of knowledge of the
Research Showing<\/a> some of the longterm positive effects on kids, for kids of certain kinds of
Program Interventions<\/a> as you discussed in your paper. Whereas among both parties, there are kind of assumptions often fairly evidencefree, or the evidence may come from a k street lobbying firm thats producing data to serve its clients, that whatever it is, the ax cutter tax break du jour will have a specific effect on growth. I would love to see somewhat more attention on the spending side. But for both of them, equally rigorous standards for what we know about growth effects, i think were a long way from that right now. So is there a role for a cbo here, for example, to be evaluating policies in the standard part of the tool kit, sort of saying, you know, we think this is likely to be growth enhancing, or not, how good an impact on distribution and join the tax together, for policies on the tax side and spending side . My view is, it would be useful for cbo to do this on both sides as analysis, and that cbo should do it on neither side for scoring. I dont favor dynamic scoring for taxes. Depending on the model that you choose, you get wildly differing results. I suspect 10 or 20 years from now based on whatever data we have then, we might be in a whole different ballpark than we are today. But my view is, we should get the best analysis we can of those effects on both taxes and spending. But i dont actually favor doing dynamic scoring on either side of the budget. I think it undercuts the solidity of the fiscal numbers. Would it make a big difference, do you think, in terms of what kinds of policies were enacted if there was some kind of score to it, or if there was some kind of standard analysis that people would look to . If you could find savings for a policy, that makes a big difference. In the window, you know, young kids 20 years down the road, theres no numbers way of really making it you can show that its going to save money and show that it will be overall net positive, it will be in the market favor. In terms of the political moving it, its very, very helpful to have a negative policy. Because then it could pay for some of the other things we would like to pay for. Thats the main reason we now have dynamic scoring on tax policies. It makes tax cuts easier to pass. You may its totally legitimate. Im not saying it is or isnt. But the main political motivation was to make tax cuts easier to pass. One of the things that you talked about was sort of like, we shouldnt oversell the research results. But as kristen mentioned, its really, really difficult to get, you know, solid, broad research, you know, you have to wait 30, 40 years, 50 years to know that these things really, really matter. But we get snippets of understanding that young, you know, the fetal situation matters a lot. Now, thats not the same as saying we have incredible evidence. But at the same time, you know, not doing policies while it may be incredibly helpful because we havent waited the 50 years to see, and it wont matter anymore, what should the bar be . How should evidence play in and how good does the evidence have to be for policy to be based on it . One of the big difficulties is if you create a
Government Program<\/a> its incredibly difficult to shut it down. I think thats one of the big issues that conservatives especially have. If we were to look at something that shows promise, but we would know if it didnt pan out, we could turn it off, or no longer continue the program, i think youd probably see a lot more willingness to take risks in this area. But i think generally, the thought is, well, if we do something, it doesnt work, its never going to end. And it will continue going on forever. I will just sort of add additional programs in the future. Are you weighing that probably it will work against the probability that right. Yeah. Sort of that general there are ways to evaluate the level of rigorousness of an evaluati evaluation. And there are technical ways of determining when you have a good study that does a very, you know, randomly controlled experiment that shows stronger studies. And we know what those are. And when you have have a good one, you want to go hard with it. Because you do want to appeal to the congress desire to make changes now that make life better for the future. What im worried about is when you have a close call, or when the caveats inside the study are actually pretty serious. And you dont explain those as you present the results. Then i think that undermines the entire exercise because there is a gotcha game here, and its not helpful when people say, well, actually, you didnt explain the detail there. Or you made it sound like the impact was really significant when it really wasnt. So thats all theres definitely a bar. I cant describe what it is. But what i would say is if you dont have it, dont say you do have it. I think another a couple of challenges here. Roberts point about that. I certainly agree that particularly where findings are not statistically significant, people shouldnt be presenting them as real findings. By the same token, we all know in the lowincome area, if you have an intervention in, lets say theres an improvement for kids or employment, whatever, im making it up, ten percentage points, the average person may say, that sounds very small. We know in the world of policy thats actually a big effect. We also have to help people with that. I think one of the really tough things is what happens when we have social science research, and policy makers draw, and the rest of us, draw policy conclusions from it, and then as the years go by, we get more research that sometimes actually goes in the opposite direction. Two examples. For years the
Research Indicated<\/a> a lack of lasting effects from headstart. Now theres
Newer Research<\/a> that suggests longterm positive effects. The same thing is moving to opportunity, the original results were disappointing in most respects. The study has very striking and important positive effects for families with kids under 13 who use the vouchers to move to lowpoverty neighborhoods. In the area of welfare reform, the academics through 2004 and 2005 were a lot more positive than the more recent
Academic Studies<\/a>. I think the political system has some difficulty, its enough to get people to use studies in the first place. And when they start using them and get used to it, and a new set of studies come along that go in a different direction, it can take years for people to get their minds out of the earlier studies, and they assume thats where the
Evidence Base<\/a> still is. You can have a series of studies show positive effect of welfare reform, and when you get the one that goes against that, all of a sudden that becomes the most important study ever done. So you have to be careful both ways. It has to be more than one study. So let me ask a question about sort of the what sarah documented. Just the basic agreement, on both sides of the aisle, about the finding that where someone is born, and the family circumstances in which theyre born in has enormous impact on their eventual outcome of their earnings, health, all these things. Is that a fact that everybody agrees on or is there a question on how true that is . Yeah, i think thatshoe yeah, i agree with that. Everybody agrees with that . Yeah. Absolutely. I think that yeah. So the disagreement is about is the disagreement about the remedies or what the federal rule should be in the remedies . What ive experienced in observing the debate is that its both about what are the characteristics of the household that lead to those disparities, and whether we should talk about all of them. Which includes the actions of another parent or marriage. As well as race, income, neighborhood, community, or just a few of them. As i mentioned earlier, i do think its an important point for people who want to persuade, especially conservatives, about intervening in the lives of poor kids. Its important for them to start by including in why we need to do this, the family issue. Because when you dont mention family issue, youve immediately got a representative who is saying whos waiting for that. Why havent you mentioned that . I dont think anyone disagrees it isnt a part of it, everyone agrees that, so just include it. So i think theres an agreement speaker ryan speaks to that. Its not right that the household growth determines the future of your livelihood. So theres agreement on that. Then we have to talk about how and why we can persuade people on both sides to come together in interventions that reduce those disparities. I think this can get complicated and challenging. So again, lets take the evidence synthesized in the paper on income effects on young kids. And the research indicating that particularly for certain kinds of interventions, s. N. A. P. , others, a variety of things, evidence that added income early in childhood appears to be linked to increased educational atta attainment. In some studies like dianes, getting food stamps early on, increased employment and selfsufficiency, showing that better
Educational Attainment<\/a> in school is going to increase employment and earnings in ad t adultho adulthood. So we have a challenge. Were going to have a debate this year among other things on importing tanif style programs. The evidence on the tanif style
Work Programs<\/a> presented another forum in the same auditorium a few moments ago by one of the leading authorities on this in the country. Not the only effect of the work requirements, but there were lots of sanctions. Bob said they did larger effect in sanctioning, and removing benefits than in increasing work. Okay. If you put these two pieces together, would this mean that largescale sanctioning by reducing income and potentially increasing tax distress among young kids could reduce their earnings in adulthood and would the net effect over time from these work requirements be positive or negative. The answer is, i think we dont know. We dont have the kind of data to draw the conclusion of which side would be higher. But the question isnt even being asked. I really do think that the findings on the longterm effects on kids has barely penetrated in policy debates on capitol hill at this point. And a challenge for the years ahead is, can it become, not the sole determining factor, but a factor amidst a bunch of other factors and other pieces of evidence as we have policy debates. I agree its new and it is so new the extent to which its penetrated, the congress is understandable in my view. But i also think that its not part of the discussion. I think it will be part of the discussion. And im not sure that just the way bob summarized the finding on sanctions in tanif was i think the general perception is the interruption of work, expectations through the tanif reform led to more work, less receipt of cash welfare and less poverty. Lets open it up to the audience for questions. Our mics are coming around. George . Hi. I dont know whether one would consider
Tax Foundation<\/a> a member a provider of research, or merely a reporter. But what theyre doing i think of extraordinary importance right now, tax reform, they did a study on the republican plan back in december, and all they did was report the numbers with the dynamic scoring, and report the numbers without dynamic scoring. I know you were on joint tax. How does one get beyond that kind of nonsense . Or is it just something we have to live with . The
Tax Foundation<\/a> is an example of my skepticism of dynamic scoring. The fax
Foundation Model<\/a>, weve written a paper about this. The fax
Foundation Model<\/a> rests on a series of assumptions, some of which are, shall we say, outside mainstream economics. The dynamic scores they get are very different than those cbo joint tax gets, and those in the
Tax Policy Center<\/a> analysis issued this fall. The range of results under dynamic scoring are so enormous, and i think thats because, you know, while in concept, who could disagree. You want to know the economic facts. If you could actually get good scores on it, you could want to use those scores in reality. Its hard to, in my view, to trust any particular dynamic scoring when so much depends on the assumptions underlying the particular model you elect to use to do the dynamic scoring. Question . Im mara weinstein. My question is about using evidence, and what all of your takes are in the fact that there is a ton of evidence in the
Research Community<\/a> that goes unpublished, a lot with negative findings. So when you have
Research Presented<\/a> to you in a world that really thrives on the cliffs notes or twitter version of the results, whose onus is it to dig deeper into that information . Is it the presenter, or is it the decisionmaker and how do you advise people to go about that . Anybody . Honestly, its probably on the decisionmaker more than anybody. We spent a lot of time talking with folks in the academic community, but also folks on the ground to get a sense of, okay, does this actual is this an academic finding that makes sense with what other folks are saying. You try to weigh all that and come to the best possible conclusion. I think the academic is trying to show a change, and show something nice. And its our job to make sure that it makes sense. You could also attest to the importance of institutions like the congressional budget office, the
Congressional Research<\/a> service. There are a number of crs reports, im thinking of some in the tax area, but they are in the spending area as well, where they evaluate, review various pieces of research. Its also not a government agency, but this is another reason i find the urban brookings
Tax Policy Center<\/a> i think is a critically important institution. We need institutions that do highquality work that arent politically motivated, and that people, regardless of their political viewpoint, hopefully can look to for help in sorting through a lot of complex data and numbers and helping them to evaluate an array of a plifrd often of information. And sometimes numerous studies that go in different directions. Terrific. I think were going to end it now. Thank you so very much for participating. Thank you. [ applause ] president elect donald trump will be sworn in tomorrow. Ahead of tomorrow nights inaugural ball, cspan visited an exhibit of the inaugural gouns worn by the first ladies. A curator with the museum talked to cspan about how their choices have shaped history and spotlighted the careers of designers. Your curator here at the museum of american history, what is the role of the first lady on
Inauguration Day<\/a> . Well, really, its the first ladys debut on the
National Stage<\/a> as the first lady of the united states. So its her first chance to play that ceremonial role that shell be playing for the next four to eight years. So she holds the bible as the president takes the oath of office","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia801406.us.archive.org\/28\/items\/CSPAN3_20170119_215200_Public_Investment_Policies\/CSPAN3_20170119_215200_Public_Investment_Policies.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20170119_215200_Public_Investment_Policies_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240627T12:35:10+00:00"}