U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is best known as a successful businessman who has quickly ascended in the U.S. Senate. But Wisconsinites know him a bit differently: as a community leader who wants others to succeed, too.

In 30-second and 60-second television and online advertisements, Johnson’s campaign tells the story of The Joseph Project, a faith-based non-profit organization he founded to break the cycle of poverty by empowering others to obtain steady, good-paying jobs.

“There are 80 to 100,000 jobs going unfilled in Wisconsin, and yet you have all these high levels of unemployment in the inner-city of Milwaukee. The Joseph Project’s goal and mission is to make those connections,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s organization teaches “soft skills,” like interviewing and proper workplace attire, to job seekers while also connecting them to potential opportunities for employment. Many of these openings are available in Wisconsin’s vital manufacturing sector, where job creators search for reliable, qualified workers to make their businesses run. After they complete their training and find work, members can take free transportation to their new workplaces, courtesy of the Joseph Project.

“The Joseph Project is breaking cycles of all kind of poverty. Because without a good-paying job, you can’t put food on the table,” Pastor Jerome Smith, co-founder of The Joseph Project, explains.

Their efforts have paid off. Today, many Milwaukee residents can thank Johnson and The Joseph Project for preparing them for the workforce, connecting them to employment possibilities and providing transportation to their jobs.

“We have Ron Johnson giving back to the community, and giving back to the people of Milwaukee,” Joseph Project participant Michael Bradley said. “I don’t see nobody else doing that.”

You can watch the full ad below:

A group of Republican lawmakers Senators announced they have formed a working group to seek insights and develop solutions to America’s poverty challenges. Named the Senate Opportunity Coalition, the group was founded by U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and includes Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and James Lankford (R-Okla.)

The Senate Opportunity Coalition, aims to craft an aspirational agenda informed by constituents’ experiences and guided by proven community-based policies. The group launched their effort by releasing an extensive white paper, “Pave the Path to a Brighter Future,” about just some of the issues exacerbating poverty in America, from insufficient housing options and the pains of food insecurity. Each senator also details solutions and success stories from which policymakers can draw inspiration.

In some cases, members of the Senate Opportunity Coalition can harken to their own life stories to better understand how poverty plagues communities. Scott, whose rise out of poverty is chronicled in the newest season of Opportunity Lives’ “Comeback” series, has long been a champion for the cause of economic mobility. For Rubio, his Cuban refugee parents toiled at multiple jobs to ensure their children had a shot at the American Dream.

“The fact of the matter is that the American Dream is not reaching everyone. For decades, government has been primarily focused on treating the symptoms of poverty. Our policy approach should focus more on actually reducing and eliminating barriers to upward mobility,” Lankford said in a statement. “I’m honored to join this coalition to explore policy solutions that will reduce poverty and provide opportunity for everyone, no matter where they come from or where they currently live. We have to find and remove impediments for people to rise out of poverty, and be able to pick and choose the life that they want for the future, and not feel trapped.”

Learn more about the Senate Opportunity coalition at Sen. Scott’s office.

This article was originally published on Forbes Opinion

A former gang-leader trying to wash away his sins. A smooth-talking preacher trying to stop kids from dying in his backyard. And an exhausted policy-wonk trying to transform the Republican Party. All three men have a lot more work to do yet.

The drunk lady wouldn’t give up her cell phone.

That’s one thing Antong Lucky remembers about that night: a little white lady, boozy drunk in the seat beside him, who looked up at the Secret Service agents and politely told them to go to hell.

“And you should’ve seen these guys, these agents,” Lucky would later say. “Some serious looking killers: black shades, the earpieces. I’m saying, when I was still gang-banging, you saw some tough looking guys on the streets, but nobody even close to these Secret Service dudes.”

But the drunk lady didn’t care. Not when the agents told her she had no choice. Not even when they explained that loose cell phones pose a serious security risk. Nothing worked. She was, after all, the wife of a top-ranking military man, a woman who’d been surrounded by killers and architects of death her entire adult life, so a couple of fresh-faced Secret Service agents may as well have been crying in their diapers.

“And you know what?” Lucky said. “It worked.”

He couldn’t believe it, but the agents let her be. And this drunk lady, sipping on cocktail after cocktail, spent the rest of the night playing Candy Crush on her iPhone, while President Obama took to the podium and tried to assure a fractured nation that it was somehow whole.

“Alright,” President Obama said. “Let’s bring this thing to order.”

The 2016 State of the Union address fell on a cruel evening. Outside, a cold front was pressing down low over Washington, DC. Soon, the streets would go quiet with snow and ice, and the city would be shut down for a week.

But as he sat in attendance that night, Antong Lucky was thinking about warmer weather. Thinking about Texas, East Dallas to be exact, and the Frazier Court Projects where he brought home straight-A report cards to his hazy mother slumped over with her pipes and powders. The streets where he incorporated lessons from economics and military strategy to start his own drug-dealing business. The red hoodies he and his friends wore when they founded the Dallas Bloods. The judge who called him a menace to society. The prison cell where he soaked in his past sins. The bodies of young men, the bullet-holes in playground equipment, the mothers draped in black because of his legacy.

And this drunk lady with her phone. He was thinking about her, too. Because if only he’d followed her lead – if only he’d told the Secret Service agents to shove it – then he could pull out his own phone right now and take a picture.

Look, when you grow up a gang-banger, a felon, a menace to society, what else but a picture can prove to everyone back home that you’ve made it? – that you really did witness a small part of history, here on a frozen winter night in the nation’s capital, while a tiny drunk lady taps at her phone screen beside you, small candy icons exploding at her fingertips.

“The basic promise of America is success that everyone gets a chance to share,” said President Obama, his voice filling the halls of the Capital Building. “Now the defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive.”

Our country is full of stories. Here are three men living in it.

From left: Antong Lucky, Rev. Omar Jahwar, Center for Neighborhood Enterprise founder Bob Woodson, House Speaker Paul Ryan, NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, and Rev. Buster Soaries / Photo: Antong Lucky

The Gangster

Politicians love an underdog. Listen to their speeches and you can’t miss the examples.

“Like a senior on a fixed income,” Obama said in his 2016 State of the Union address, “or a student trying to get through school, or a family trying to make ends meet…”

Now think back to whether you’ve ever heard a politician say, “Americans are struggling, yes they are, oh yes. In fact, just this week I happened to meet a struggling gang-member who was only trying to sell enough coke and heroin to buy a new car because his old car is totally lame and the girls on the block were making fun of him…”

You don’t hear about that kind of American. Well, that’s who Antong Lucky is – or was. He’s not like that anymore. No, sir. Today, he’s a businessman, owns a bail bond company and a local record label in Dallas. He’s a community leader, too. An urban specialist. A violence interrupter. The guy who city council calls upon when the young gang-bangers get bloody and peace seems so far off, when old ladies get to sobbing at their windowsills.

But Lucky is, in an unseen way, still the same man he once was – that same cool young dude with nearly a million dollars stacked in his apartment – if only because the sins of the past are not so easily shed. They never are. Not even when you are regarded today as a man who has likely stopped more violence and saved more lives than anyone in the city of Dallas. Not even when a dark-haired Congressman named Paul Ryan visits you in the hood and invites you to attend the State of the Union as his personal guest.

No, that old part of yourself – the grimy part, the hungry part – it’s always just under the skin.

“I never saw myself as a bad guy,” Lucky said. “But I realized early on that in my neighborhood, as tough as it was, you had to survive, and you learn quick that being weak will get you hurt – or killed.”

So you tough it out, bury the weak part of yourself. And on Lucky’s block, the streets ran blue with Crips: blue shirts, blue bandanas, pistols tucked under blue waistbands. A hot, blue Texas sky above. To wear the red of the Bloods, the well-known rival gang of the Crips, was to be beaten or killed. Even to be unaffiliated – that is, to be just another kid on the block – was itself enough to get jumped. So you fall in line.

Unless you’re Antong Lucky.

“At a certain point, after getting beat up by these neighborhood Crip guys so many times, I told my friends we were gonna be Bloods,” Lucky said. “At that point there were no Bloods in Dallas, but I told them we’re gonna be the most furious and feared gang in the city, that we’re not going to allow them to keep doing what they’re doing to us. That we’ll use tactics, and skill, to put fear in their hearts.”

Today, there are hundreds of Bloods in metro Dallas. By some rough estimates in the community, they outnumber the Crips four-to-one. Lucky started all that.

He was just 13 years old at the time.

***

President Obama said, “We can teach our kids creativity and passion… and they will succeed.”

But for Antong Lucky: “It wasn’t about success,” says Lucky, “it was all about survival.”

Today, psychologists would likely dole upon Lucky some diagnosis related to trauma, or abandonment. He was a kid growing up “with all these issues – abuse, no role models, no people to look up to.” So he got busy. He did what he had to do. He survived.

Years later – after he’d amassed too much money to hide, after he was a lifetime away from his mother’s food stamps and extension chord beatings, away from the memory of his father in prison, away from all the cracked cement and weeded front yards and hangdog faces that were a constant reminder of just how easy it was to lose track of the good part of yourself – Lucky ended up in prison.

“I’ll never forget, the judge called me a menace to society when he sentenced me,” Lucky said. “And I remember looking around, going ‘huh?’ Then I realized he was talking to me.”

Prison is what changed things. What did it was all these young guys coming up to him, kids really, who had gotten twenty years, fifty years, life sentences – all because of some gang lifestyle Lucky had exemplified. In prison, Lucky was revered. He was the OG, the Original Gangster, founder of the Dallas Bloods. A legend. They loved him.

He hated himself.

One day, sitting in the prison’s TV room, Lucky was watching the nightly news broadcast when suddenly his own neighborhood flashed across the screen. It was a video report showing some big guy in shiny shoes who looked like a cross between a dapper 1920s Chicago gangster, a car salesman and an old-school civil rights leader. Which is to say, the man had style.

“But I also noticed this man on the TV screen, this guy walking around my neighborhood, he looked like he was about ready to fall asleep, his eyes all shut when he talked, like you think he’s sleep-walking,” Lucky said.

In the prison TV room, Lucky turned up the volume and listened. The big man onscreen, with his drooping eyes and stylish digs, was speaking, it seemed, directly to him. And in a smooth voice, too – confident, wise. Speaking on matters of hope, and ending gang violence, and creating peace.

And rebirth.

Not a bad sales pitch, Lucky thought.

Lucky was just a few weeks shy of parole. That night, he dialed his cousin and asked him to make a connection.

Lucky, center, joined up with Rev. Omar Jahwar, right, after leaving prison to start working to rebuild his community. | Photo: Antong Lucky

The Preacher

Pastor Omar Jahwar of Dallas, Texas, is not tired. The big man’s eyes might be halfway closed, squinting at you, but he’s wide awake. Matter of fact, he’s looking right into your eyes, his gaze washing over your pupils. And he keeps looking. What does he see? Not a lost cause, no. And certainly not a victim either.

“I see warriors, mhmm. I look at these men, that’s what I see. And you don’t tell a warrior that there’s no war – they ain’t going to believe you,” Jahwar said. “Now listen, these young men on the streets of Dallas, they’ll accept your pity as an idea, but they don’t really get it, because they know there’s a war going on when everybody around them is dying.”

So this is what Jahwar does. Look where he stands. Beyond his shoulder is a field dotted with deadly landmines ready to explode. Now he holds out a hand.

“This is my role. I tell these young men, ‘There are landmines in this field, this gang life, but if you allow me to lead you, brother if you take my hand, I can show the path around the mines, and you can cross unscathed.’”

Jahwar became Lucky’s mentor – the man who guided him past the landmines. And it was a good fit, too. They shared the same sense of humor. They’d seen the same demons. That’s why it made sense that Jahwar would be invited alongside Lucky to the State of the Union address, the two Dallas men now seated together amongst the dignitaries and pomp leaders (and that drunk lady still absorbed by the flashing lights on her phone screen).

Jahwar, in his shiny shoes and slick suit, listened as the president spoke, the pre-scripted words unraveling down the aisles and up to the vaulted ceilings.

“We know that this generation’s success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country’s future,” Obama said, “and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility.”

In that case, Jahwar is a model of American idealism. Responsibility for your fellow man? He’s got that in spades. And while he may not be sculpting the future of the entire nation – because who can but the Lord? he’d say – his own hands had been molding the shape of his Dallas community for decades.

It’s one of the reasons he immediately saw Lucky, fresh out of prison back in 2000, as an opportunity – an opportunity to be saved, and to save others.

“See, there’s nothing like being hopeful that you can make it,” Jahwar said. “To know that somebody’s with me. To say, ‘I’m not in this by myself.’ That gives you the ability to go places you never thought you could go.”

Jahwar had been there before. He’d seen guys like Lucky, felons just out of prison, half-hanging onto a belief that they can do better. And he’d seen how it can all fall apart, too. As the first ever gang specialist hired by the state of Texas, Jahwar dove into gang culture at the height of the violence a few decades ago, back when bodies were even more casual than they are today.

“See, what we do in communities is we attempt to bring social change through individuals who are closest to the problem, those who can actually deliver help from a hand-to-hand point of view,” Jahwar said. “I recruit guys who’ve lived that lifestyle in some of the roughest zip codes in the nation, and I’m asking them to become front-line soldiers fighting for one idea: that urban life does not have to be stunted by violence and a sub-culture of abuse.”

The goal was to get these guys, all of them former gang-members, most of them former-inmates, to inundate themselves in the neighborhoods and the schools and to be ambassadors of peace.

“I call them ‘urban specialists,’ not just because they know how to do violence interruption, but because they know how to look at this urban landscape and find what we can’t see in it,” Jahwar said. “They are, by far, the most effective people to invade and change this culture.”

You change, too. Don’t forget that. Doing this work for peace, you can’t help but change. Just look at Antong Lucky and how far he’s come.

Here’s a story: One night, a year or so back, some gang members shot up Lucky’s storefront. Maybe they got it confused with another place, maybe they were just being stupid – who knows? Anyway, Lucky called up Jahwar, said he was burning to get payback. But instead, Lucky took to heart the mission of non-violence and called some city council members and some local gang leaders. He proceeded to mediate with these local leaders – the politicians and the gang-bangers, brought together – and arranged a situation that would not only assure his business was untouched in the future, but that all businesses would remain off-limits to gang activity. What could have resulted in a gun-brawl instead ended in bonded guarantees from all parties that the most vital economic drivers of the community – that is, small businesses – would be safe from gang violence henceforth.

A huge step for the city of Dallas, all because of the change that took place within Lucky.

Jahwar makes sure his men understand that lesson. When you go down those streets, and face the man you used to be, you change in ways that will surprise you. That’s what Jahwar’s eyes are saying when he looks at you, all droopy and knowing. He’s saying: By the Grace of God, look at how great you’ve become.

Somewhere in the middle of the State of the Union address, as President Obama was urging Americans to see the good in our nation, Jahwar turned and looked at Lucky with his sleepy eyes.

And in that hazy look, things did seem dreamy, because what else would explain how these two unlikely partners from the streets of Dallas made it all the way here?

The Speaker of the House

You know this man. He’s the guy with the dark widow’s peak, the poker face hovering over the president’s shoulder during the State of the Union address. He’s the guy who would later tell USA Today that Obama’s speech, wrought as it was with jabbing references to Republican primary politics, “degraded the presidency” and was “just not really what presidents ought to do.”

“The American people know what the right choice is,” Obama said.

Well, that remains to be seen. For the time being, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is also the guy trying his best to unite the Republican Party around ideals of inclusivity, and of listening to the full range of American voices, stories and colors.

It has practically become his career mission.

But in the age of Donald Trump – “What do African-Americans and Hispanics have to lose by going with me,” reads one unconvincing tweet from Trump,“Look at the poverty, crime… I will fix it!” – Paul Ryan has a lot of work ahead of him.

Ryan is used to work. He’s also known failure. The man onstage behind President Obama during the 2016 State of the Union address is a very different man than he was back in 2012, when his and Governor Mitt Romney’s executive branch hopes evaporated.

Ryan, who had been front and center during that campaign, seemed to disappear from the public eye for a moment.

As it turns out, he had found refuge in the rust belt of Ohio.

“When I first met Paul in Cleveland back in 2012, I was amazed that a politician, after having lost an election, would express interest in knowing about issues in these communities,” said Robert Woodson, McCarther Genius Grant recipient and founder of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, speaking in the Opportunity Lives documentary series Comeback. “Why,” Woodson asked, “would Paul Ryan care?”

Why indeed?

Maybe because the campaign of which Ryan had been a part – milky white Mitt with his Leave It To Beaver sidekick Paul – seemed to be so vastly out of touch with a big part of the American story. Maybe because comments like Romney’s 47 percent blunder, in which Romney seemingly wrote off the opinion of a massive swath of the American electorate, served to affirm that notion. And maybe you could be cynical and say that Ryan wanted to be sure he didn’t miss out on this demographic in future elections. Sure. That could be true.

Or maybe Ryan had found himself lost. Just for a moment, this man who, ever since he was a 16-year-old kid standing over his father’s grave, had steered his own life so smoothly and skillfully, had now found himself on rocky terrain. His vision of the country was growing murky. The notion that America was a nation of “makers and takers” no longer seemed viable. It seemed, as he would later admit, plain wrong.

So he wandered around the country, talking with people, listening, hearing stories, making friends.

One of those friends was a gangster. Another was a preacher.

“To me, the American idea is a real simple story,” Paul Ryan said, “and everybody has their own version of that story.”

And that story – “that in this country,” as Ryan concluded, “the condition of your birth should not determine the outcome of your life” – grows far more complex as it weaves and bends, as it meanders down the cracked streets of Dallas, to the frozen winter boulevards of Washington, DC. It’s a story that some do not survive, while others feel as though they’re dreaming to have made it this far at all. And it’s a story that sweeps up farmers and single mothers, lost veterans and phone-addicted army wives.

But one thing is certain: there are those who will fight to keep that story going, and among those fighters will be a gangster, and a preacher and a Speaker of the House.

Evan Smith is a staff writer for Opportunity Lives.

This article was originally published on Forbes Opinion

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R–Wis.) calmed the nerves of some doomsday predictors on Wednesday and seemed confident that a government shut-down would “most definitely” be averted by Friday’s looming deadline.

A vote that came through the House Rules Committee just before midnight on Tuesday seemed to affirm Ryan’s prediction, as negotiations between Democratic and Republican House leaders resulted in a last-minute amendment to a water resources bill that would provide additional funding for Flint, Michigan. Now that this legislative snag has been cleared – a snag that began due to disputes over how assistance would be provided to those affected by high levels of lead in Flint’s water – the Senate can move forward with its spending bill, which must be passed by Friday or else the government will once again shut down.

Speaking at the Economic Club of Washington, DC, Ryan seemed lighthearted, almost casual in his affirmations that such a shut-down would be avoided.

“It will most definitely be funded,” Ryan said, adding that the United States “will also pay off all of our debts, for that matter,” which was a direct response to claims made by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who said that, if elected, he may consider refinancing or disputing portions of the national debt.

“No, no,” Ryan said. “We will pay our debt – these things honestly aren’t worrisome.”

This Wednesday gathering at the Economic Club of DC revealed a unique moment of calm for the Speaker, who seemed relaxed in the aftermath of weeks-long tenuous budget talks in Congress.

Expounding upon the looming deadline for the government shut-down, Ryan outlined his plan to usher in a new form of systems for Congress – a fix to a problem that, as he said, “has been driving me absolutely crazy.”

“As Budget chair, we wanted to do a regular order system,” Ryan said. “Individual bills to address specific problems – you just have better government that way.”

Ryan went on to note his disapproval with the operating procedure under Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, calling it a system that “can only work successfully when one party controls both the House and the Senate, but can’t endure under times of divided government like we typically have.”

“I know that sounds partisan,” Ryan said, “but when it takes sixty votes just to bring up a bill for consideration, and there are partisan incentives to prevent that from happening, that breaks this system down and you’ve seen that occur over and over again.”

The nearly hour-long talk at the Economic Club also saw Ryan musing on his love of mountain climbing, his pension for sleeping on a cot in his office, exercising in the same gym as President Obama, and his daughter’s recent election as class vice president.

“So not at least one person in our family got elected as vice president,” Ryan quipped.

He also delved into more meaty topics like regulatory reform, condensing America’s seven tax brackets down to three, and the need for “a better way for this country, where instead of squabbling over small-ball tactics, our gaze can raise to a horizon that we’re all shooting for.”

As for whether or not Ryan has presidential aspirations, he skillfully diverted, claiming only that, “You never know what the future holds.”

Evan Smith is a Staff Writer for Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter @Evansmithreport.

Who says Congress doesn’t do anything worthwhile?

Two members of Congress certainly earned their keep this week, when Reps. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) and Michael Burgess (R-Texas) entered an elevator in the Rayburn House Office Building to see a man lying unconscious on the floor, Politico reports.

Murphy, a trained psychologist and certified in CPR, and Burgess, a medical doctor, leapt into action and began performing CPR, while staff ran to obtain a defibrillator and alert Capitol Police.

From Politico:

Murphy and a Capitol police officer worked together to use the defibrillator. Murphy, who has been CPR certified since January 2015, put the pads on the man’s chest and did not stop performing CPR while the police officer oversaw the defibrillator, according to a staffer on the scene.

The man’s pulse returned, he started breathing again and was transported to a local hospital.

You can read the full story at Politico.

Congressman Patrick Erin Murphy (D-Fla.) has had a pretty tough time lately. As incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) rises in pre-election polls, national Democratic fundraising operations have pulled financial aid to the Democrat, nixing nearly all of the money they promised to spend in the final weeks of the campaign.

Now, Murphy’s critics are sounding the alarm about at least $1.75 million his father spent in pursuit of his son’s Senate seat. Tom Murphy Jr., a construction company CEO whom the younger Murphy routinely identifies as a “union carpenter,” recently allocated $250,000 to a pro-Murphy super PAC. Other donations include $1 million to the Senate Majority PAC, as well as $500,000 to Floridians for a Strong Middle Class. All three groups have provided support to his son’s bid for the U.S. Senate.

According to Roll Call, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust “alleged the elder Murphy’s donations demonstrated illegal coordination between Patrick Murphy’s Senate campaign and the groups his father donated to.” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who lost to Murphy in the Democratic Senate primary, made a similar claim earlier this year.

Murphy, among the worst of the categorically weak candidates nominated by Democrats this cycle, is also under fire for posting a photograph on Facebook that clearly shows him groping an unidentified female companion just a few years ago. In a Tuesday evening debate with Rubio, Murphy did not deny the existence of the image, nor did he apologize for publishing it on his personal Facebook page.

Two debates remain before Floridians cast their ballots November 8. Rubio holds a 5-point lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average for the race.

Latino representation is poised to grow in Congress following the 2016 election and Latinos are likely to tip the scales in a number of battleground states. But around half of all eligible Hispanic voters are projected to sit out this year’s presidential and congressional election, according to a new poll and analysis by the National Association of Elected Officials (NALEO).

At an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. just a few blocks from the White House, a number of leading luminaries and political experts gathered to discuss the findings. Among the panelists included Israel Ortega, senior writer for Opportunity Lives, as well as Maria Peña, senior correspondent for La Opinion, the largest Spanish language daily in the United States.

According to the analysis by the nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy group, Latinos look to make the most gains in the U.S. House of Representatives, where their number may jump from 29 to 36. And in the Senate, the number of Latinos may jump from three to four if Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto (D) prevails over Republican Rep. Joe Heck in the seat being vacated by retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

NALEO also found strong support for Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump in the presidential race for the Latino vote. The poll showed a much tighter race in the critical battleground state of Florida, where the Republican real estate mogul enjoyed the support of 23 percent of Hispanics surveyed.

With weeks before Election Day, the Sunshine State may play a decisive role in determining the outcome of the presidential election — a point Arturo Vargas, NALEO executive director and panel discussion moderator was quick to make at the onset of his presentation.

“Latino support for President George W. Bush in Florida help[ed] him garner Electoral College votes needed for victory in the 2000 presidential election,” Vargas told a packed audience that included a number of journalists.

Although many on the panel made it a point to criticize the Donald Trump candidacy, they struggled to reconcile why this hasn’t translated into an even bigger lead for Clinton in a number of battleground states and why Latinos are not flocking to the Democratic Party in bigger numbers.

“This race is a lot closer in a number of battleground states because Secretary Clinton is a weak candidate that is not inspiring the Latino community,” said Ortega.

Barring a dramatic shift in the presidential contest, the Republican Party will likely lose the Latino vote by a wide margin on Election Day. This would amount to another disappointing showing for three consecutive presidential elections after winning nearly 44 percent of the Latino vote in President Bush’s successful 2004 reelection bid.

But according to Neri Martinez, executive director of the Future Majority Project, an effort to recruit minority candidates by the Republican State Leadership Committee, there is hope for the future for the Republican Party despite this year’s gloomy poll numbers.

Martinez pointed to a considerable investment by the Republican State Leadership Committee’s more than $11 million investment since 2011 as proof that Republicans are working to attract highly qualified Hispanics to run for office.

A successful template of these efforts can be seen in high profile Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Rubio got his start in local politics as a county commissioner before becoming the first Hispanic Florida Speaker of the House, then U.S. Senator and most recently a presidential candidate.

And even in the age of Trump, Martinez tells Opportunity Lives that she feels confident that their recruiting and fundraising efforts will continue unabated regardless of the outcome of the presidential election.

“In the years that I have been doing this work, Hispanic Republicans are choosing to run because the party is recruiting and investing in them, and not because of any other race,” Martinez said.

“We will continue to build the Party from the ground up,”

The complete findings from the National Association of Latino Elected Officials can be found here.

If Republicans manage to retain control of the U.S. Senate this election, they will have U.S. Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) to thank. Control of the upper chamber may hinge on the outcome of a handful of elections, including the one in the race to succeed outgoing the Senate Democrat minority leader from Nevada, Harry Reid.

In a normal year, it would be easy to see Heck cruising to victory. After all, Heck has an impressive resumé. Before jumping into politics, Heck was a small business owner, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a medical doctor — exactly the type of citizen-legislator the Founders envisioned serving in office.

But what really sets Heck apart is that, unlike some Republicans who have been slow to adjust to an increasingly diverse electorate, he has spent years raising his name identification and profile with the state’s minority population.

“I remember Joe Heck reaching out to the Hispanic community back when he was in the State Legislature,” Chris Roman, a long-time Latino Nevada resident and political observer, told Opportunity Lives. “This was different than most Republicans at the time.”

Of course, this is not a normal year. Heck, like other Republicans in tight senate races across the country, has been caught up in a delicate balancing act of distancing himself from the one-man-wrecking crew that is Donald Trump while not upsetting rank and file Republicans who support their party’s presidential nominee.

Democrats know this. And in Nevada, tying Heck to Trump is the Democrats’ main strategy in this highly contested — and increasingly expensive — senate race.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto shakes hands with U.S. Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., after the Nevada Senatorial Debate on Friday, Oct. 14, 2016 | Photo: AP

Democrats have nominated Catherine Cortez-Masto, a public servant who has spent a good chunk of her professional career in state government. Cortez-Masto served most recently as state attorney general. And in a state where the Latino population is quickly growing, Cortez-Masto touts her Mexican heritage on her father’s side. On the stump and in political advertisements, Cortez-Masto bills herself as a problem solver that has taken on big banks while fighting to protect the rights of children and families. She promises to do the same if elected to the U.S. Senate.

If elected, Cortez-Masto would become the first Latina U.S. senator. Republicans can claim the first Latina Republican governor with Susana Martinez in New Mexico. But in all the years of the U.S. Senate, there has been no Latina ever elected. Democratic Party strategist Andres Ramirez is excited about this possibility.

“As a Latino, I’m proud of what she has done for our community in Nevada and am excited to see her represent our community on the national stage,” Ramirez said.

But for Wadi Gaitan, press secretary for the LIBRE Initiative, a free market Hispanic advocacy group that is running online and broadcast advertisements against Cortez-Masto, identity politics is not enough to ignore what they consider terrible public policy positions.

Cortez-Masto opposes a measure that would allow Nevada parents to exercise more freedom in deciding where to send their children to school with the aid of an education savings account. The measure, signed into law last year by Gov. Brian Sandoval (also of Mexican heritage) was lauded by school choice advocates who see ESAs as a way of giving parents an alternative to the traditional public school choice model with greater ownership of state dollars earmarked for education.

Gaitan tells Opportunity Lives that Hispanic families are among the biggest recipients of ESAs and Cortez-Masto’s opposition speaks volumes.

“The most important characteristic for someone running for office is where they stand on the issues and whether they are supporting programs that are in the best interest of the community,” he said, adding that education is a top issue for Latino voters, especially in the Las Vegas area.

In one ad, the LIBRE Initiative accuses Cortez-Masto of “siding with special interests and her political friends instead of Nevada students.”

Immigration is emerging as a defining issue for both candidates. Fortunately for Heck, he has a long track record of being generally supportive of immigration reform. In fact, Heck in 2013 broke ranks with many fellow House Republicans by sponsoring legislation that would effectively legalize undocumented immigrants brought to this country as minors, so long as they are working toward receiving an education or a vocational career.

Because of Heck’s pragmatism on immigration, Democrats have had a harder time casting the doctor as a Trump clone. But that doesn’t mean that they are not trying.

“Heck has played politics with the issue of immigration reform, and as result compromised his integrity on the issue,” said Ramirez, the Democrat strategist. “Latinos are well aware of his flip flops on this issue and therefore do not support him or give him credit on this issue.”

Still, not all are all buying into this narrative. This includes Laura Nowlan, a Heck supporter who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. She says opposition to Heck among some in the Latino community is purely political.

“Heck has been helping Latinos for a long time,” Nowlan said. “In fact, he came up with [an immigration reform] bill finding support even among Democrats… In the end, they opposed it because they didn’t want a Republican to get the credit.”

But with salacious news dominating the headlines, immigration policy nuance is a tough sell. Nowhere is this more evident than when news recently broke that Trump had been caught on tape using vulgar language about women. Almost immediately, Heck called for Trump to withdraw from the race — a decision that drew the ire of Trump supporters.

Heck did find support, including that of Adriana Fralick, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Mexico. “I am proud of what he did. It took a lot of courage for him to do that,” Fralick said.

Heck will need to find that magic formula of getting out the Republican base while still drawing support from Latinos, the young, and suburban female voters like Fralick. If Heck comes up short, it would be a devastating blow to a Republican Party that needs to win elections in places like Nevada, which is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse by the year..

As in other states, such as Ohio where U.S. Sen. Rob Portman is leading according to most public opinion polls, Heck is counting on some voters in the Silver State to split their ticket, meaning some voting for Hillary Clinton while voting for the Republicans down ballot.

“If you have someone that is doing a really good job, your want to support that person and promote that person,” Fralick said. “Heck deserves to be promoted.”

On Election Day, Nevadans will not only determine whether Heck deserves that promotion, but they may also end up determining whether Republicans hang on to the Senate.

Israel Ortega is a Senior Writer for Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter:@IzzyOrtega.

On Monday evening, Opportunity Lives hosted a “Comeback” screening event at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) headlined the event, and he requested that Pastor Jerome Smith of the Joseph Project also participate.

Following a screening of a few of the episodes of the film, Sen. Johnson and Pastor Smith, joined by Dallas-based Urban Specialists Pastor Omar Jahwar and Antong Lucky, held an on-stage discussion and question-and-answer session with nearly 100 students and guests on community-based solutions to poverty. The conversation covered topics ranging from criminality to social entrepreneurship to economic empowerment.

Johnson’s heart for the poor beats outside the halls of the U.S. Senate. For the past several years, he and Smith have run The Joseph Project, a Wisconsin-based non-profit that teaches vital job skills to unemployed adults in search of long-term work.

After successfully completing training with The Joseph Project, qualified applicants are matched with local employers, typically in the state’s manufacturing sector, who are seeking reliable employees. These positions often pay upwards of $25 an hour with full benefits. Since many of the program’s participants have criminal records, such opportunities would be impossible without The Joseph Project vouching for their trustworthiness to prospective employers.

Once an applicant receives an offer, Johnson’s group ensures he or she can go to work. If no dependable transportation is available, The Joseph Project will transport workers to their jobs and back home for free. The organization runs several shuttle routes daily, ensuring that those who complete the program can earn a steady paycheck once they enter the workforce.

From left: The Joseph Project’s Pastor Smith, Urban Specialists Antong Lucky and Rev. Omar Jahwar, and Sen. Ron Johnson | Photo: Jennifer Felten

For Johnson, The Joseph Project is a deeply personal passion. It combines a faith-inspired calling to serve others and honoring the manufacturing heritage of the Midwest. And for the Wisconsin Republican, it harkens to his own business success story, where he rose from machine operator at his wife’s family business to eventually its owner and CEO.

And unlike many public figures, Johnson is actually involved in the organization he promotes. He’s led 13 training sessions, and he’s personally connected job seekers to Wisconsin manufacturers with positions to fill. Without Johnson’s leadership, many families couldn’t put food on their tables.

At Monday’s event, Johnson recalled the families whose lives have been transformed by The Joseph Project. While he credited Pastor Smith’s ministry for the program’s success, his business acumen and personal network have been utterly indispensible in helping people achieve their dreams.

Following our event, National Public Radio (NPR) ran a brief write-up about Johnson’s faith-focused efforts to eliminate poverty. The story, apparently meant to convince secular Madisonians that Republicans want religious litmus tests for those needing aid, insinuates that Johnson believes only his religious-affiliated approach is the right one.

Johnson’s political opponent, former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), responded by claiming non-profits like The Joseph Project were insufficient substitutes for robust government spending. But he didn’t stop there, denigrating the organization, explaining:

“It’s not enough to pick people up in a van and send them away a couple hours and have them come back exhausted at the end of the day. That doesn’t make a community.”

When the NPR reporter relayed Feingold’s full statement (there was more that wasn’t included in the published piece) to Johnson after our event, he was visibly disgusted and seemingly a little shocked that his Democratic rival would insult the program’s leaders, volunteers and participants so brazenly.

Perhaps Feingold’s bizarre strategy of attacking a faith-inspired inner city charity is a reaction to the incredibly effective slate of television advertisements from the Johnson campaign telling the stories of the beneficiaries of The Joseph Project. Or maybe it’s because the Democrats thought Johnson’s seat would be an easy pick-up for them in the 2016 cycle. The race is currently a statistical tie with Johnson trending upward and Feingold collapsing in the polls.

Either way, Johnson is right to be repulsed. Feingold’s comments demonstrate the Left’s earnest sentiments about the poor: they are too stupid to want better for themselves and too lazy to do the work necessary to achieve it.

While Democrats like Feingold never stop congratulating themselves for their altruism, it is this same self-aggrandizement and condescension that has exacerbated the problems in America’s disadvantaged communities. Their policies have done nothing to improve the quality of life for those who struggle, and in fact, have made it worse by discouraging the dignity of work and diminishing each individual’s worth.

Fifty years after President Lyndon B. Johnson’s so-called “War on Poverty” began, U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $22 trillion on programs intended to help the poor. Much of this spending has expanded government under control of Democrats who promised that their benevolence would eliminate poverty. It didn’t.

Today, 14 percent of Americans are still poor – the same percentage as those impoverished half a century ago. After allocating three times what the U.S. government has spent on all wars from the American Revolution to present day on eliminating poverty, there is still an inequality of opportunity in the form of educational injustice and economic immobility in disadvantaged communities.

To make matters worse, the Democrats’ favorite spending programs have undeniably eroded the family unit, diminished localized civic involvement, and handicapped faith-based institutions. For centuries, these have been keys to thriving, stable communities. Without them, they have crumbled.

Despite the abundant evidence that clearly proves just how wrong they’ve been, Democrats are so wedded to the cause of growing government that they continue to put politics over people and ideology over better ideas. And when faced with the human costs of the repeated failures of their policies, Democrats soothe their guilt by celebrating how much money they’ve spent and promising to spend more. For too many Democrats, outputs are irrelevant, particularly if the inputs – government spending – make them feel good about themselves and help them get reelected.

And too many Democrats see charities, especially those rooted in a faith tradition, as a threat to the poverty industrial complex that perpetuates their power. They insist that groups like the Joseph Project – an organization that has actually been successful moving people from welfare to work – are inferior alternatives to a government system that, in many cases, is the hurting the very people it is designed to help.

Feingold won’t tell Wisconsinites the truth: organizations like the Joseph Project, if replicated and tailored to neighborhoods nationwide, would practically end the poverty industrial complex that has destroyed communities, and with it, the spirit of far too many of our fellow Americans.

Or perhaps he simply doesn’t understand some important truths. The government can’t give a felon a hug. A federal law can’t instill in a hopeless person a sense of purpose. And no Congressional action is as effective as someone giving themselves in service to another.

It is human beings caring for each other person to person – human beings like those who work and volunteer for the Joseph Project, including Sen. Ron Johnson – who make a difference in our country.

While Feingold is recycling partisan talking points, his Republican rival is actually helping save families and restore communities. Johnson isn’t making self-indulgent statements from the floor of the U.S. Senate or issuing snarky statements condemning local charities. He’s actually serving the people he represents.

I imagine that’s what Wisconsinites would want in their Senator – someone who is actually invested in what happens to the people in his state. Or, they could elect Russ Feingold, whose charitable causes are invoiced for his participation.

The choice couldn’t be more clear.

Ellen Carmichael is a senior writer for Opportunity Lives. Follow her on Twitter at @ellencarmichael.

Donald Trump’s likely defeat may set the stage for what progressives like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have long dreamed of — a full-scale procedural nuclear strike on not just the Senate Republicans but also the Senate itself as an institution.

If a Trump loss drags down GOP Senate candidates Democrats could take control of the Senate, a scenario that has a roughly 66 percent chance of occurring according to political handicappers FiveThirtyEight.com. If the Republican minority then attempts to filibuster President Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees (using Senate rules that require 60 votes to move forward) Democrats have signaled they’ll launch their nuclear strike on the Senate’s protections for minority rights which have existed since our founding.

The key issue is how Reid and Democrats define fairness. Historically, fairness in the Senate meant guarding against the tyranny of the majority by protecting minority rights with procedural tools. Until 1917, fairness meant all 100 Senators had to agree on a path for moving forward before anything could happen. This threshold was lowered to 67 in 1917 and then to 60 in 1975. In other words, in today’s Senate it takes 60 Senators to cut off debate and move forward. This is also described as ending a “filibuster” by “invoking cloture.”

Senators have been reluctant to lower this number from 60 to 51 because doing so would render the Senate indistinguishable from the House, which is a majoritarian “winner take all” body.

Reid has no problem turning the Senate into the House and already used a tactical nuke in 2013 when he changed Senate rules with 51 votes to ram through Obama’s executive branch nominees and circuit court judges. In a recent interview with Talking Points Memo, Reid predicted Democrats would go nuclear again if Democrats take control of the Senate.

“I really do believe that I have set the Senate so when I leave, we’re going to be able to get judges done with a majority. It takes only a simple majority anymore. And, it’s clear to me that if the Republicans try to filibuster another circuit court judge, but especially a Supreme Court justice, I’ve told ’em how and I’ve done it, not just talking about it. I did it in changing the rules of the Senate. It’ll have to be done again.

“They mess with the Supreme Court, it’ll be changed just like that in my opinion. So I’ve set that up. I feel very comfortable with that.”

Presumptive Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), should Democrats retake control of the Senate, suggested he would follow Reid’s advice in an interview with Roll Call.

“My number one goal, should I become majority leader with your help, is to get a progressive Supreme Court,” he said. “A progressive majority on the Supreme Court is an imperative, and if I become majority leader, I will make it happen. I will make it happen.”

Of course Reid and other Democrats now eager to go fully nuclear had a different attitude in 2005, when Republicans unwisely considered using the same tactic to push through President Bush’s nominees.

At that time Reid said, “The threat to change Senate rules is a raw abuse of power and will destroy the very checks and balances our founding fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government.”

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) blasted the Republican proposal saying, “Neither the Constitution nor Senate rules nor Senate precedents nor American history provide any justification for selectively nullifying the use of the filibuster … nor [does] history provide any permissible means for a bare majority of the Senate to take that radical step …”

Then-Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) offered the clearest assessment: “The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play. It’s the one thing this country stands for: not tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field.”

If 2016 has taught America anything it is that people are tired of feeling like their voices don’t matter and that the system is tilted against them. Even if those fears are sometimes imagined or manipulated, they are real and potent.

Some Senators say the 60-vote margin to end debate is mere tradition and sentiment. Yet, these explicit protections for minority rights weren’t written into the Constitution because they are the Constitution. Concepts like the rule of law and constitutional government mean the strong, or the many, can’t rule over and terrorize the weak, or the one.

Reid’s authoritarian leadership helped set the stage for Trump’s authoritarian message, which is now setting the stage for something far worse – a system that will be incapable of working through dissent when our national divisions are particularly acute.

As author C.S. Lewis aptly said, “A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion.”

Our Constitution, and its carefully crafted system of checks and balances, is our nation’s gut flora that helps us metabolize dissent. We’re so divided and preoccupied with politics precisely because that system isn’t working like it should, and some politicians like Reid want to marginalize already marginalized voices even further.

Trump’s claim that the system is rigged is a conspiratorial refrain designed to help him avoid embarrassment. If anything this message will depress voter turnout when a more clear and present danger is looming — a Clinton presidency unchecked by a Democratic Senate. At this late hour, Republicans would be wise to abandon Trump in favor of helping Senate candidates who may be the last line of defense against what our founders always feared – a tyranny of the majority.

John Hart is the Editor-in-Chief of Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter @johnhart333.

When the Obama administration admitted last week that premiums under the Affordable Care Act are rising significantly — 25 percent across states that use the federal exchange; more than 100 percent in Arizona — liberals were there to save the day.

Remember that the law includes generous subsidies, they said. That will cover the premium hikes and keep the law on track.

So, no problem, right?

Wrong. Here’s why:

1. Someone has to pay for those subsidies

This is pretty straightforward: If huge increases in millions of people’s premiums are being covered by the federal government, that’s coming from taxpayers.

Now, as liberals love to point out, Obamacare has so far ended up costing less than projected, because health care inflation has been unexpectedly low and fewer subsidized enrollees are signing up than expected.

But subsidy spending on a per capita basis is actually much higher than expected — that is, we are spending much more in subsidies for every person covered on the exchanges than the Obama administration promised. Even before the full size of the premium hikes were known, taxpayers were projected to shell out $56 billion to subsidize 12 million Obamacare enrollees next year, or about as much as we’ll spend on the entire federal highway system.

2. Only about half of people on Obamacare plans get subsidies

You may have heard liberals point out that about 85 percent of enrollees in the Obamacare exchanges receive subsidies, meaning about 1.5 million people on the exchanges will see the full impact of the premium hikes.

But this hugely understates the number of people who pay for pricey Obamacare coverage without subsidies: 7 or 8 million more Americans buy Obamacare plans without going through an exchange and therefore get no subsidies.

That is, about half of the entire individual health insurance market doesn’t get subsidies, and will see the full brunt of the premium hikes. Meanwhile, millions of other Americans bear the cost of Obamacare by going uninsured because premiums were already too high.

Generally, most of these people make more than 400 percent of the federal poverty line, so maybe they’re not in dire need. But they’re not rich, either: For a two-person household, 400 percent of the poverty line is about $63,000 a year, not a princely sum.

President Obama certainly thinks they need help. He’s proposed expanding subsidies to more of the middle class and to young people (many of whose premiums are high for what they’re getting but not high enough to receive subsidies).

3. If you don’t change your plan, the subsidies may not cover the premium hike

You may have heard Obamacare defenders note that you won’t see premium hikes if you “shop around.” Shopping around is a key part of having a competitive insurance system, but it doesn’t come without costs.

Exchange subsidies are pegged to help people afford the second-cheapest “silver” plan in their insurance market. If your current plan went from being, say, the cheapest silver plan in your market to one of the most expensive, subsidies won’t cover your premium hike.

Switching health insurance plans isn’t a cinch, especially as insurers have used limited doctor networks and narrow drug coverage to help keep premiums down.

In other words: If you like your subsidy, you might not get to keep your doctor.

4. Eventually, the subsidies stop growing

For those who receive them, subsidies have generally covered the premium hikes this year, because they’re calculated based on people not having to pay more than a certain share of their income for health insurance. (Originally, 2 percent for those making 100 percent of the federal poverty line, up to 9.5 percent for those making 300 to 400 percent of the poverty line.)

But that won’t always be the case — indeed, the law is explicitly designed for subsidies to stop covering premium increases at a certain point. For the next few years, the percentage of income expected to be spent on insurance rises slightly if premium hikes exceed income growth (as they certainly will this year).

Source: Investor’s Business Daily

Then, starting with plans bought for 2019, subsidies will only increase at the rate of inflation — much less than the typical premium increase — if the total amount spent on subsidies exceeds 0.504 percent of the entire economy.

We’re not currently on track to do that in 2019, because overall health spending has not been rising terribly fast and there haven’t been as many enrollees as expected. But if subsidies are needed to cover rapidly rising premiums for a couple more years, it’s quite possible that threshold will be reached. (Of course, that’s sort of the point: The architects of the law know that ever-increasing subsidies could encourage premium growth. It’s too bad the rest of the law made out-of-control premium growth nearly unavoidable.)

5. Liberals know subsidies aren’t the answer

Premiums are rising because insurance companies are spending more money covering their Obamacare customers than they’re currently charging in premiums.

The optimistic explanation for this is that they set premiums too low in the beginning, and this is a correction to a more realistic level.

But this year’s premium hikes could well make the pool of people they’re covering even more expensive, by causing some healthy people to drop out. (Remember, half of the people in the Obamacare market will see these premium hikes — not just the small sliver you’ve heard about.)

That makes it hard for this to be a one-time correction. Premium hikes could push so many healthy enrollees out of the market that at the new, higher prices, insurers are still losing money. Then, you need even more premium hikes, and even more healthy people leave the market, and you’re in a death spiral — which widely respected Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt thinks is already happening.

This is all a long way of explaining why you’ve seen many Obamacare defenders not claim that subsidies will solve things, but admit that another solution will be needed: a tougher individual mandate. The most direct way to solve the problem, they realize, is just to force more people into the pool.

So that’s where the current premium hikes leave us, at best: To save Obamacare, its defenders want us to beef up its least-popular, most coercive, and solidly unconstitutional provision.

Sounds like a great system.

Patrick Brennan is a contributor for Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter @ptbrennan11.

Election years can produce some pretty crazy legislation, with members of Congress scrambling to win their constituents’ affection with ideas that vary in their seriousness and wisdom.

This year, Democrats, led by U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have a doozy: Send a $581 check to every Social Security recipient in America, and pay for it with by closing a supposed corporate loophole.

This idea is as politically crass as it sounds, and it’s worth knowing exactly why. But more importantly, it underscores why Democrats, who belong to the party that created Social Security, have become deeply unserious about how they plan to maintain and reform the program.

The idea for the one-time payment doesn’t come out of nowhere: It’s supposed to make up for the lack of a cost-of-living adjustment in Social Security this year. The COLA for next year also will be very small at just 0.3 percent.

But the reason for no cost of living increases for Social Security this year is… the cost of living hasn’t risen! Are Democrats becoming inflation truthers now?

Schumer says that the inflation rate doesn’t accurately reflect the cost of living increases seniors face. Ever the New Yorker, Schumer suggests that the typical measure of inflation is misleading since it’s held down by a big drop in gas prices this year, as if seniors don’t buy gas (or heating oil).

To be fair, the federal government thinks seniors may have faced slightly higher rates of inflation than the general population over the last 30 years, but other economists disagree. So maybe we should move Social Security to this new measure of inflation to help protect seniors down the road — but Schumer and Warren want votes right now.

The proposed payment has no connection to any more accurate definition of the cost of living. It’s $581 because the salaries of America’s top 350 CEOs last year rose by an average of 3.9 percent, and $581 is 3.9 percent of the average Social Security benefit. The actuarial assessment of such a benefit calculation, I believe, is “I can’t even.”

So how are Democrats going to pay for this? They want to eliminate an incentive for corporations to pay their CEOs with performance-based bonuses rather than guaranteed salaries, claiming it’s a “loophole.”

As it stands, corporations are not allowed to count CEO salaries that exceed $1 million as a business expense like they do other salaries. But if the above-$1-million payment is a performance-based bonus, they can write it off.

Whether this is good economic or social policy is up for debate. For what it’s worth, the 2014 Republican attempt at corporate tax reform proposed eliminating it, too. But it does seem to have encouraged more CEO pay to be tied to performance. It’s fine if Democrats want to risk undoing that, but they’re being remarkably mendacious by calling it a “loophole” that benefits CEOs. It was created with a very specific, arguably progressive, purpose.

So this legislation really sets a new bar for politically motivated policymaking. But it also shows how unserious Democrats are about fixing our long-term fiscal picture to save Social Security.

Whether you think the performance-pay tax incentive is good policy or not, ending it will raise revenue—which the federal government needs to maintain its current spending trajectory. Spending the revenue on a one-time, unnecessary payment is totally irresponsible. Moreover, it could create expectations for future one-time payments that the program cannot afford (for the worst-case scenario, see what “13th checks” did to cities like Detroit).

Although Democrats contend that the bill improves Social Security’s fiscal picture (by drawing revenue from a new source), it’s really a step in the wrong direction.

If Democrats just want to do more to help low-income Social Security recipients, that’s fine. In fact, the top Republican minds on this issue, including former Social Security trustee Andrew Biggs, agree that it makes sense to boost benefits for low-income recipients over time.

But Republicans propose paying for that by curtailing benefits for wealthier seniors. This one-time payment would instead boost everyone’s benefits, wasting tax revenue on seniors who don’t need it.

As it happens, that’s how Democratic plans for Social Security work: They levy massive new taxes, and then spend basically all the new revenue on new benefits.

Making Social Security work for future generations will involve preserving or strengthening the program for people who need it, curtailing the growth of benefits for the people who don’t, and moving it toward long-term solvency. If we get new revenue, the new revenue needs to go to shoring up the program, not indiscriminate new benefits.

Democrats have shown increasingly less interest in such a reform, and this election year giveaway shows that they regard Social Security as a political piggy bank, not an institution worth taking seriously and preserving.

Patrick Brennan is a contributor for Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter @ptbrennan11.

As I’ve written recently here at Opportunity Lives, down-ballot Democrats should be performing much, much better against Republicans across the country with Donald Trump at the top of the GOP ticket. But in many key states, Democratic candidates and campaigns have been so spectacularly bad that Republicans are likely to maintain a wide majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and have a fighting chance at maintaining control of the U.S. Senate.

They’ve overstated their chances and overplayed their hands at every turn. And nowhere is that more clear than Indiana.

When U.S. Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) announced his retirement, most experts believed that Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.) would have no trouble holding the seat for Republicans. But in mid-July, Indiana political progeny and former Democratic Senator Evan Bayh announced he’d challenge Young for the seat, hoping to win back what he was forced to vacate after serving as the deciding vote for a deeply unpopular Obamacare.

In the Hoosier State, Bayh is political royalty. His father, Birch Bayh, served nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate and, in addition to mounting an ill-fated presidential bid in 1976, is best known as the only non-Founding Father to amend the U.S. Constitution twice.

So, national Democrats were elated to discover the younger Bayh’s determination to take back the Senate seat that was once his. They figured with his sky-high name ID and political connections, coupled with Trump being a drag at the top of the ticket, Bayh could start picking out the drapes for his luxurious Senate office.

Boy, were they wrong.

Bayh speaks with reporters after announcing his retirement from the U.S. Senate in Feruary, 2010. Bayh declined to run for reelection after voting in favor of the unpopular bank bailout and Obamacare bills. | Photo: AP

Although there is great competition for such a distinction, Bayh is arguably the worst candidate running the worst campaign in a competitive Senate race this cycle. Rep. Patrick Erin Murphy (D-Fla.) will receive his first runner-up trophy in the mail.

In a rather unusual turn of events for Democrats, both the national and local media have absolutely excoriated Bayh. In fact, the coverage of his candidacy has been so negative that it’s impossible to recall Bayh enjoying a single positive day of press.

Since reporters find few reasons to help Republicans or maim Democrats electorally, it’s clear that Bayh’s transgressions and failures have left them no choice but to tell the full truth about him. In doing so, they’re reiterating to voters that he’s a giant phony totally disinterested in living among them and is, instead, keen to rub elbows with the political elite inside the Beltway.

Right out of the gate, Bayh’s non-residency became the foundation of the entire race, a story that has spanned months, despite the Democrat’s emphatic attempts to divert the public’s attention to Donald Trump.

Here’s just a sampling of headlines from local and national outlets about Bayh’s absence from the Hoosier State:

“Bayh didn’t stay overnight in Indiana condo once in 2010”

Associated Press (October 2016)

“Bayh defends Indiana residency”

Politico (August 2016)

“Report says Bayh lists D.C. home as residence”

The Journal Gazette (August 2016)

“Records contradict Bayh’s assertion over staying in Indiana”

CNN (August 2016)

After months of controversy, The Indianapolis Star ran an appropriately titled feature, “Is Evan Bayh an Indiana resident?” In it, they interviewed neighbors who lived near Bayh’s purported home in Indianapolis. Most couldn’t remember ever meeting or seeing him. Even his supporters admitted he wasn’t truly a resident of Indiana.

An analysis of Bayh’s campaign contributions shows that only 40 percent of his donations came from Indiana. Most financial support has come from outside donors or non-Indiana PACs.

Unfortunately for Bayh, his political problems didn’t stop there. Week after week, new stories have emerged painting a pretty sinister picture of the Democratic politician.

His post-Senate life was enriched with a $2 million job with New York private equity firm Apollo Global Management. When he announced his new campaign, he received maximum contributions from 15 of the firm’s employees, as well as large donations with 33 attorneys associated with Apollo’s operations.

This probably explains why Bayh spent the final weeks leading up to his hotly contested election raising money with bankers and industry lobbyists in Washington, D.C. His absence from the campaign trail to fundraise with wealthy special interests was so noticeable, in fact, that CBS mentioned it in a story on his race, marveling that he was away from Indiana so close to the election.

Bayh’s connections to the financial services industry aren’t new. New records indicate that on the day the 2008 bank bailout package passed Congress, Bayh held a secret fundraiser with Wall Street lobbyists in Washington, D.C. He would go on to vote for the bill, despite the fact that he received “15,000 to 1” phone calls from constituents in opposition to the legislation.

Throughout his career in the U.S. Senate, Bayh received hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions from banking lobbyists, while supporting most of their legislative positions in Congress. Politico also reports that there is no evidence Bayh attended or spoke at 60 percent of the banking committee hearings that took place leading up to the financial meltdown in 2008.

And Bayh’s trouble with lobbyists didn’t stop there. The Huffington Post, a left-leaning outlet, reported this week that Bayh’s meetings with lobbyists in his U.S. Senate office weren’t related to official business. His schedule shows that his last year as a Senator was spent meeting with potential employers in the private equity field.

This was a trend for Bayh, who often met with special interest lobbyists in his D.C. office during critical legislative moments. On Monday, CNN’s Manu Raju explained that the Democrat used his Senate office to conduct meetings and phone calls with wealthy donors in the health care industry, including one just a day prior to casting the deciding vote on Obamacare. Government watchdogs insist that this is a violation of Senate rules regarding campaigning using official resources.

Since he was so busy with lobbyists, Bayh missed a lot of his Congressional hearings on critical issues of national interest. In addition to skipping banking committee hearings as the financial meltdown occurred in 2008, Bayh missed 75 percent of all meetings of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

And when he wasn’t meeting with lobbyists and skipping crucial committee hearings, Bayh was using taxpayer dollars to stay at hotels in Indianapolis, a place he promised he was already living. The Democrat promised to reimburse the funds spent but only after a Politico investigation uncovered his wrongdoing.

Bayh’s Repulbican opponent, U.S. Rep. Todd Young (right), has surged to a lead in recent polls amidst revelations that Bayh has spent little to no time in the state since leaving the Senate. | Photo: AP

His high profile lifestyle also includes doing something he’s long decried as a politician: hiding his money in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying taxes. According to a local news report, Bayh invested between $1 million and $5 million in an offshore company, Athene Holding, which is affiliated with his former private equity employer, Apollo Global Management.

Apparently, this has all caught up to Bayh, whose astonishing free fall in the polls has been fodder for national outlets like CNN and Politico, the latter of whom recently published a piece entitled, “The collapse of Evan Bayh.” The Indianapolis Star endorsed his opponent, Republican Todd Young, in a glowing editorial in mid-October.

On Friday, a poll conducted by local Indiana media outlet WTHR shows Bayh trailing Young by five points, 41 percent to 46 percent. When he entered the race, Bayh led by at least seven points in most polls. If Republicans hold the Senate, it will be in part because Young ran a superb campaign and earned voters’ trust while Bayh expected to coast into the seat with minimal effort.

Bayh’s hubris is indicative of a larger Democratic problem this cycle. They’ve had awful candidates, terrible campaigns and delusional forecasts of the political climate. And while Trump might be a drag in a few races, it’s the Democrats’ failures that have prevented them from making the gains they believed they’d earn in 2016.

Ellen Carmichael is a senior writer for Opportunity Lives. Follow her on Twitter @ellencarmichael.

Going into election night, Hillary Clinton’s supporters and Donald Trump’s critics were preparing variations of a “See, I told you so” message. Hardly anyone, including some in the Trump campaign, anticipated quite what happened next. Rather than losing decisively, Trump defeated Clinton decisively. This is a time for reflection and humility, particularly for those of us who predicted or anticipated a different outcome.

A few observations about a stunning result:

The Republican Party has a moral obligation — and an historic opportunity — to fix the problems that gave rise to Trump. For the past three decades working Americans have felt increasingly hopeless in the face of America’s true income inequality problem: the growing gap between stagnant wages and rising costs of living. Republicans led by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have already developed an agenda called “A Better Way” that can practically fix these challenges.

No one thought Republicans would be handed a trifecta on election night — control of the presidency, the Senate and the House. Yet, that is what has happened. Republicans must now act.

The deep irony in this election, which was framed as an uprising against “the elites” or “the establishment,” is that it featured “We the People” using the system our Founders designed to reform the system. The election was a repudiation of conventional wisdom using the tools of constitutional governance. Nothing was rigged. It was the people using the power that was already at their disposal to shape their own destiny.

Coming together doesn’t mean Republicans have to be silent about their president’s flaws. National populist rhetoric, and degrading comments toward women and the disabled, should be fearlessly confronted and rebuked regardless of who makes such comments. Conservatives fearlessly, and sometimes relentlessly, criticized President Bush. They should do the same with President Trump. Critiquing with the right attitude will make him more effective.

Republicans have embraced the need to do soul-searching. Democrats need to do the same. The economic disaster that has befallen rural and urban communities is the result of nearly 40 years of failed center-left economic policies. If this was a rejection election, Democrats need to think carefully about the ideas and policies that were rejected. And, no, FBI director James Comey wasn’t the author of those failed policies. This wasn’t Comey’s fault. It was Clinton’s fault.

As shocking as Trump’s victory was, Republicans can’t necessarily build a party on a shrinking constituency. Yes, Trump deserves praise for winning the rust belt but Republicans need to deliver real results for those voters while bringing new voters into the party.

Americans just witnessed one of the most surprising elections in our history. President-elect Trump and congressional Republicans now have a responsibility to be wise stewards of victory and work with all sides to forge principled compromises that solve problems.

John Hart is the Editor-in-Chief of Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter @johnhart333.

Since Donald Trump’s shocking victory, America has been engulfed in a conversation about race and identity that has been both constructive and schizophrenic. Any constructive dialogue requires “active listening”—telling the other side that you hear and understand their concerns. I posted a piece at Forbes recently that, in part, attempts to tell liberals that conservatives hear what they’re saying about the implications of appointing someone like former Breitbart CEO and alt-right panderer Steve Bannon to a senior position in the White House.

President-elect Trump’s decision to appoint former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus rather than Bannon as chief of staff is, on a balance, a good sign. But conservatives should trust but verify Trump’s intentions. I have personally dedicated myself to the eradication of the alt-right as an idea. The alt-right is a political death cult that is virulently anti-American and incompatible with conservative ideas about human dignity. In other words, I would say to my liberal friends, I get it. We may not agree about Trump’s intentions or the threat Bannon poses to freedom and decency, but I understand your concerns. I hear you.

To my honest liberals friends—and I have many I dearly love and don’t merely tolerate or put up with—I would suggest the key to understanding the conservative perspective post-Trump is to study the rhetoric of outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

From the perspective of many conservatives, Reid is a textbook bigot. According to the textbook, the full definition of a bigot is “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.”

Reid is not a racial bigot per se, but he’s a bigot in every other sense of the word. He embodies what is essentially an alt-left blue state nationalism that treats non-members as subhuman and morally inferior. To be a conservative in Reid’s alt-left reality is to be guilty of racism, misogyny and indifference to poverty until proven innocent.

This latent bigotry is pervasive on the Left. It is a perspective that has fused with the corneas of many liberals. They’re stuck viewing the world a certain way. This attitude is part of what voters rejected on Election Day. For decades, Democrats deposited counterfeit compassion in the hearts and minds of voters. In 2016, the check finally bounced. Liberals are in shock because “they care” and are blind to the possibility the election outcome may, in part, be a consequence of their failed policies. Reid has been the leading enabler of this mindset.

A few case studies:

Framing the election as a victory for racism instead of a failure of liberalism

After the election, Reid issued a characteristically self-righteous, overwrought and vindictive statement declaring Trump’s election has “emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America.”

“Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America,” Reid intoned.

An aide said Reid was “appalled by the rush to normalize Trump.” Yet, Reid’s statement merely illustrated how he has normalized bigotry and elitism on the Left.

As Opportunity Lives and many outlets including the Wall Street Journal noted, Trump won about one-third of counties like Erie, Pennsylvania that Obama won twice. Reid’s suggestion that these places became havens for white nationalists is absurd. In fact, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) called Reid’s statement “an absolute embarrassment to the Senate as an institution, our Democratic party, and the nation.”

Even Michael Moore said it’s ridiculous to explain Trump’s victory as a victory for racism. During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Moore said, “They’re not racist. They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein.”

Reid’s statement shows he’s more alt-left than Michael Moore. He’s the Steve Bannon of the Left.

The Trent Lott vs. Harry Reid double standard —ideology trumps race

In 2002, during a celebration for U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said of the South Carolina Republican, “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”

Lott’s comments set a firestorm of criticism from the Right and the Left. Even though Lott issued heartfelt apologies, Republicans knew they had to hold him accountable and forced him to resign.

In 2010, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann quoted Reid making racist comments about Barack Obama in this passage of their book “Game Change”: “He [Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama—a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’”

Reid apologized but was allowed to retain his position by his party, normalizing the Left’s tendency to put ideology and party over race.

Describing opponents with epithets such as “evil”

Reid has a long history of expressing intolerance toward anyone who disagrees with his views. He described people protesting Obamacare as “evil-mongers” and dismissed Tea Party members as “anarchists” who “hate government” even though he knows full well that the Tea Party is a movement of constitutional conservatives.

If Reid had spent as much time improving the quality of his party’s ideas and solutions as he did belittling and misrepresenting his opponents, 2016 may have turned out differently for Democrats.

Rigging the system in his favor

Reid was devoted religiously to the message that Republicans were the “Party of No,” but no other Senate majority leader in history was less tolerant of dissent and debate. Reid used a tactic calling “filling the tree” to prevent the Republican minority from even offering amendments more than any other majority leader. Reid was unwilling even to debate competing ideas in many instances.

Reid also changed the rules to indulge his intolerance of dissent, even though he spoke against identical rules changes when he was in the minority.

In 2005, Republicans were considering using the “nuclear option”—changing Senate rules that require 60 votes to proceed with a simple majority vote—to push through President Bush’s judicial nominees.

Joe Biden, who was still a U.S. senator from Delaware at the time, said, “The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play. It’s the one thing this country stands for: not tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field.”

Reid wholeheartedly agreed. At that time Reid said, “The threat to change Senate rules is a raw abuse of power and will destroy the very checks and balances our founding fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government.”

Yet in 2013, Majority Leader Reid decided the rules didn’t apply to his team and he invoked the nuclear option to push through President Obama’s nominees, further normalizing liberal elitism.

There are other instances of nastiness and corruption too numerous to list—dismissing bipartisan compromise as “happy talk,” using land deals to help his friends and family, calling tourists “smelly,” and lying about his relationship with organized crime, and more.

Republicans are right to be on guard against the influence Steve Bannon may exercise in the White House. Thanks to Harry Reid, we’ve seen what happens when bigotry corrupts our democratic institutions.

John Hart is the Editor-in-Chief of Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter @johnhart333.

After last week, Republicans have a renewed sense of optimism about ending the disaster that is Obamacare. In pursuit of greater health care access, Americans have endured seemingly unending setbacks, from the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the law as a tax to insurers fleeing the marketplace.

Now, with Republicans leading both the presidential and legislative branches of government two months from now, the GOP must keep its promise to repeal and replace Obamacare with patient-centered reforms that will provide relief for the American people.

But, in a recent interview, President-elect Donald Trump explained that he would consider keeping certain parts of the law, despite ample evidence that it’s falling apart.

Since Trump has few, if any, ideological commitments to conservatism, this comes as no surprise to those of us who warned our fellow Republicans about him throughout the GOP primary process. But, it also means that he’s a blank canvas as it concerns policy, and Republicans have the opportunity to get to work.

There is no individual more poised to lead that effort than my former boss, House budget committee chairman Tom Price, M.D. (R-Ga.). Price, an orthopedic surgeon, developed his conservative alternative to Obamacare before President Obama’s signature law even passed. As former chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee and a dedicated physician, Price combined his policy experience and his real-world expertise to develop the Empowering Patients First Act that contains a lot of inspiration for crafting a GOP replacement to Obamacare.

“Every day, we hear new stories of how Obamacare is harming patients. That’s why we’ve developed a plan to repeal Obamacare and start over with patient-centered solutions that adhere to the principles of affordability, accessibility, quality, innovation and choices,” Price told Opportunity Lives. “We are working to put patients, families and doctors in charges of medical decisions, not Washington, D.C.”

Here’s what an Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan should look like:

Yes, a full repeal is necessary. With compounding insurance costs for consumers and providers fleeing the market posthaste, it is simply impossible to begin implementing real health care reform with Obamacare still intact. So any efforts must begin with an immediate and complete repeal. The law is simply unworkable, especially with its funding schemes and counterproductive mandates, as the base for new reforms.

Republicans must have the political courage to withstand Democratic attacks on repeal, which they will inevitably frame as kicking millions of people onto the streets. The law remains incredibly unpopular, even as after years of its architects insisting it would become beloved to the American people as soon as they felt its benefits.

That hasn’t happened. In fact, Obamacare has endured overwhelming public disapproval since its inception, beyond partisan breakdowns. And with the recent news of premiums skyrocketing and fewer options available for patients, it’s probably even worse than polling averages would indicate.

But, Americans seem to agree that something needs to be done to address the rising costs of health care — costs that are bankrupting far too many Americans. That’s why legislation that includes a full repeal must also trigger a replacement package that meets some of these challenges.

If you want to achieve universal health care, you can do it by making it more accessible. You make it more accessible by making it more affordable.

So, as we approach replacing Obamacare, it’s important to recognize that Republicans and Democrats see health care goals much differently. Democrats have long desired universal coverage, while Republicans have always wanted greater competition to drive down prices.

The good news is that both parties can get what they want. If we make health care more affordable, it will become more accessible. If it becomes more accessible, more people can buy it.

But, in order to make it more affordable, there needs to be some serious reforms that would strip government of its overreach into the health care industry. Here are some reforms, both creative and proven, that would significantly drive down the costs of care:

• Medical malpractice reform: America is an incredibly litigious society. As a result, doctors must obtain costly medical malpractice insurance to shield them from frivolous lawsuits. Republicans understand that these costs are understandably passed on to patients in the form of more expensive care. In hopes of bringing down professional insurance costs for doctors, and in turn, for patients, some lawmakers support capping damages that can be awarded, which Democrats counter limits plaintiffs’ rights to a fair trial.

Price’s approach would allow each medical specialty’s professional society, such as the American Association of Anesthesiologists or the American Thoracic Society, to develop a set of best practices to determine how physicians should reasonably respond to various patient conditions. The set of standards could be admitted as evidence in court if a doctor is sued, so he or she can demonstrate that a proper diagnosis or treatment occurred based on recommendations from the corresponding specialty society. Currently, such a defense is inadmissible in court. With such a reform, the courts could more easily weed through frivolous legal actions, resulting in lower malpractice insurance costs for doctors and lower care costs for patients.

• Interstate purchase of insurance: If we can buy car insurance from another state, there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to buy health care. This is a concept that would be illogical to oppose, but state regulators are employed to keep a bureaucracy in place that wouldn’t allow for such competition. By loosening the regulatory stranglehold on insurance, we’d have greater choices from more places. More competition would mean lower costs and better quality coverage for families.

• Eliminating mandates: Mandates drive up costs. Get rid of them. A single man should not be forced to purchase coverage that includes maternity care. A Christian patient should not be coerced into buying insurance that features abortion provisions. Obamacare’s mandates have priced a lot of consumers out of the private marketplace, sending many people into substandard Medicaid or thrusting them onto plans they don’t like.

• Make it cheaper to become and remain a doctor: Most doctors leave medical school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. They should be allowed to perform public health service (rural clinics, public hospitals), at least part time, to discharge some of it.

Additionally, doctors waste too much time — time they could be using to see patients — dealing with regulatory compliance. Standardizing medical coding, permitting electronic medical records and telemedicine and allowing for the safe storage of unused prescriptions would significantly cut down costs incurred by physicians and passed to patients. House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) outlines such measures in his “50 Ideas to Improve Health Care.”

After costs are lowered, there are still those who would struggle to purchase insurance. But, there are plenty of ways to make quality coverage available to them.

Aside from those who are truly indigent, Medicaid is a totally unacceptable health care option. It artificially restricts access to quality care, creating true health inequality in America. It shouldn’t be the only choice people have.

There are many options for getting these folks covered, even those with serious pre-existing medical conditions. Here’s how:

• Tax incentives: All Republican replacement plans feature some semblance of tax benefits for health coverage. They vary from deductions, credits, refundable credits and advanceable refundable credits, depending on an individual or family’s financial situation. Instead of the direct subsidies of Obamacare, patients should be able to keep more of their own money to obtain the kind of health care they need.
• Enlarging the pools: Insurance risk pools are part of the actuarial science that group people together so that, in theory, there are more healthy patients than sick ones, allowing insurers to make a profit. The government controls “high risk pools” that provide coverage to those deemed “medically uninsurable.” These individuals were likely unable to receive coverage due to health concerns or pre-existing conditions.

Some Republicans support maintaining these “high risk pools” to cover these patients, especially minor children, with serious illnesses. But, this, of course, would require government mandates.

A better alternative is Price’s proposal in “Empowering Patients First” that would allow for pools to be freed of their current limitations and expanded to lower risk for insurance companies. In his plan, individuals and families seeking their own insurance can pool with others based on any association (a trade union, philanthropic organization or so on) they wish. Additionally, government bureaucrats could no longer restrict the size of risk pools, which could create pools large enough to absorb the risks associated with covering sick or chronically ill people.

How do we know those with pre-existing conditions would be covered in larger pools? We don’t. But, we have good evidence to assume they’d have a high likelihood of receiving coverage. After all, even someone with eight speeding tickets or three wrecks in a year could get car insurance. There would be serious market consequences for insurers who were known to restrict access to care for those who might pose a higher risk to cover.

Other Republican proposals would lower costs, safeguard the patient-doctor relationship, expand access to care and spur innovation. And all of this would be accomplished without turning over health care decisions to the government.

Check out the Opportunity Lives Solutions Studio to learn about just some of the conservative ideas to create a system of patient-centered health care.

Ellen Carmichael is a senior writer for Opportunity Lives. Follow her on Twitter @ellencarmichael.

On Thursday at the Federalist Society’s annual lawyers convention, U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) made an incredibly important point about Congressmen who act without regard to the Constitution, saying they’ll let the courts decide.

This year’s convention was focused on the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and this specific panel was focused on Scalia’s views on federalism and the separation of powers.

“I just wish [Scalia’s] wisdom would make its way more into the halls of the United States Congress, because Scalia understood that you have to defend your own turf,” DeSantis said. “One of the things that frustrates me is, some of my colleagues will say, if we’re debating a bill, ‘Is it constitutional? Do we have this power? Does it conflict with the Bill of Rights? Well let the courts figure that out. We vote for whatever we think is good, unless and until the courts stop us.'”

But DeSantis explained the glaring problem with that thinking.

“Well the problem with that is that the courts can only decide cases or controversies. So basically anything that would not lead to a lawsuit, you’re basically saying there’s not going to be anyone that’s going to stand up for the Constitution. Our duty is to defend the Constitution and act in conformance with the Constitution. So I’ve always said, if there’s a bill that’s not constitutional, my duty is to vote against it regardless of what the courts may or may not do.”

Politicians in all branches of government swore an oath to defend the Constitution. When it doesn’t, the Constitution suffers and our rights and liberties that it defends suffer. And the courts can only correct so much.

DeSantis applies this to the executive branch:

“It’s not just the Congress. I mean President Bush when he signed McCain-Feingold, he said, ‘I think it’s unconstitutional but we’ll let the courts figure that out.’ That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it. If you’re not convinced it’s constitutional you’ve got to err on the side of exercising your authority to defend the Constitution.”

When I discuss my understanding of the role of the courts in defending the Constitution, I regularly emphasize this point: When was the last time you heard a Congressman ask, “WAIT GUYS—is this constitutional?”

It’s refreshing to hear a Congressman ask that.

Shohana Weissmann is the Digital Director for Opportunity Lives. You can follow her on Twitter @senatorshoshana.

Despite intense public pressure, Republicans have held firm in their opposition to Obamacare after all these years. After failing to persuade even a single Republican congressman or senator to support the Affordable Care Act, Democrats made a point to tar Republicans as being cold, heartless and insensitive to the plight of uninsured Americans.

But as many of Obamacare promises have failed to deliver and the law’s unpopularity holds steady, Republicans have been exonerated for refusing to get behind a popular president supporting one of the biggest expansions of the federal government in decades.

Republicans have always had alternatives to Obamacare. But with President Obama in the White House, it became too easy for the media and the law’s supporters to dismiss GOP ideas. But now that Republicans are poised to control all three branches of government for the first time in over a decade, repealing Obamacare is no longer a pipe dream.

In fact, repealing president Obama’s signature legislative achievement is as close as a direct order from an angry electorate that ticked off frustration with the health care law as one of the most deciding factors of how they voted.

So the hard work of legislating is imminent. Some Republicans will be better prepared for the test than others. While some Republicans, including the president-elect, have put off fleshing out the details of an Obamcare replacement, others have been working diligently to provide a sound and well thought out Republican alternative. Ellen Carmichael has reported at Opportunity Lives on the efforts of Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a former doctor leading the House effort to replace the Affordable Care Act with a patient-centered and market-driven alternative.

Sadly, there are not enough Tom Price Republicans. That means, that there are still too many that struggle to explain what an Obamacare alternative would actually look like in practice. Beyond calling for the purchase of healthcare insurance across lines and decoupling health insurance from employment (both worthy ideas), many Republicans look uncomfortable when asked what other meaningful steps can take place to insure the millions of Americans that lack health insurance. This needs to change quickly.

Republicans could do no worse than start by reading and re-reading a paper published by the Foundation for Research and Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), a new free market think tank, called “Transcending Obamacare and Achieving Market-Based Universal Coverage.” Avik Roy, one of the leading intellectuals in the conservative movement, thoughtfully and persuasively lays out a series of ideas to cover the uninsured.

Roy looks to technological and online advancements to disrupt an industry that has been painfully slow to embrace change. Among Roy’s ideas include telemedicine, which would let patients have a medical check up completely online. While this idea is not entirely new, and is in fact already taking place in some places, regulatory burden has made it difficult to grow and flourish.

Another idea is medical tourism, or allowing patients to receive hospital care outside of their immediate area. Roy points to businesses in Dallas that have recently started flying their employees to neighboring Oklahoma for some medical treatments. Of course, for most employees—let alone individuals—this is prohibitively expensive. But with increased competition, largely spurred by deregulation, the cost for something like medical tourism could come down in the future much the same way purchasing a cell phone has become accessible for many individuals.

At the heart of the FREOPP paper is innovation and competition without unnecessary tax credits, mandates or cost-controls. That’s not to say that some iteration of the recommendations would not include some or all of these features, but ultimately it’s about decreasing regulations and barriers of entry as a way of spurring competition and innovation—with the hope of providing safe, low-cost and quality health coverage to those without health insurance.

Common sense ideas that could even find bipartisan support. Unless Democrats buy into some of these reforms, partisanship will prevail and only guarantee that the same scenario will play out again when the inevitable pendulum of power swing back to the opposing party.

It’s a momentous challenge, but there are plenty of ideas to make repeal-and-replace a success. What’s needed now is both the will, and the courage, from Republican policymakers to see this through.

Israel Ortega is a Senior Writer for Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter: @IzzyOrtega.

Donald Trump’s victory earlier this month has even his skeptics cautiously optimistic that his presidency could yield at least a few positive policy results. As Republicans formulate their dream repeal-and-replace bill to President Obama’s signature health care reform law, Democrats are also bracing for the upcoming Obamacare fight.

There are already trial balloons floating throughout progressive social media and left-wing outlets, testing and re-testing effective counters to Republicans’ efforts to repeal the law and replace it with patient-centered reforms. They know that Obama’s legacy is tied to Obamacare, and many of their Democratic friends and allies lost their positions throughout every level of government as retribution for their support for it.

Here’s how they’ll try to fight the GOP’s plans to repeal and replace Obamacare:

Admit that the law is flawed, but that it’s more logical and humane to just repair it instead of fully repealing it.

Before the law passed, Democrats assured an angry public it would take some time to see the full benefits of the law. From the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov to the unilateral delays for mandate implementation by the Obama administration, the American people saw pretty clearly that the law was a mess.

Suddenly, Democrats began arguing that there were small errors in the legislative text that needed to be addressed. They promised that the law itself was not defective, lambasting Republicans who dared to criticize Obamacare as heartless cronies who hated the sick.

Every element of the law is broken (yes, even the bit about pre-existing conditions; there are better solutions than what Obamacare prescribes). And as it stands, the program is in a total financial collapse. Insurers are fleeing the marketplace or suing the federal government. Families are seeing their premiums quadruple or are losing access to their physicians.

Simply put: there is no way to “fix” the law. It must be scrapped entirely. Any liberal pleas to make mere minor adjustments demonstrate just how out of touch they are — or just how much they’d lie to the American people. At some point, it’s time for honesty.

Instruct media and commentators to inform the public that full benefits of Obamacare have not been realized, while insisting skyrocketing premiums were normal “growing pains” associated with the law’s implementation.

This is one of my favorite bits about the Democrats’ strategy because it, like the aforementioned “fixable fallacy,” is an approach they continue to use without any success, and yet they persist in it.

By the way, the message coordination on this is stunning. Every single time an insurer announces it is leaving the Obamacare exchanges or shutting down operations in certain states, the news reports include so-called health care “experts,” all of whom just so happen to be left-leaning, who promise that these changes are normal fluctuations in the marketplace (insurance rates are always going up, they cry). And when that doesn’t work, they urge the public to have patience as the law shakes out a bit more.

Just one problem: insurers, employers, physicians and policyholders had four years since the beginning of the debate on Obamacare to its implementation to get adjusted to the new rules, regulations, mandates and taxes. And we’re now three years past that point!

Now, their argument is — and will likely continue to be — that Americans should wait just a little while longer and then they’ll really love Obamacare. At some point, Democrats will have to acknowledge that there is overwhelming evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, about how this law is totally unworkable and totally destructive.

Americans are feeling it, which is why the law remains wildly unpopular. If public opinion hasn’t shifted in favor of the law six years after it passed, it likely never will. But, that won’t stop the Democrats from begging the American people not to believe their “lying eyes.”

Blame private citizens, center-right media companies, job creators and bigotry for the law’s unpopularity.

Look out Koch Brothers, because you’re about to be blamed for Americans hating Obamacare! Employers, big and small, you’re heartless jerks, too. You, too, Fox News, Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh and probably anyone who has ever vocalized the tiniest amount of skepticism about the law’s efficacy or solvency. And by the way, if you oppose Obamacare, it’s probably because you’re coming from “a place of privilege” (whatever that means).

This is a favorite trick of the Left. They impugn the motivations and character of individuals affiliated with their ideological opposition. And as Obamacare falls apart, look for Democratic lawmakers and talking heads to blame virtually everyone but themselves for the law’s failure. If only we loved it as much as they did, they’ll argue, the law would have had a chance of succeeding.

Trot out potential “victims” of Obamacare repeal, while ignoring how they’d benefit from actual patient-centered reforms.

The Democrats are going to make America look like a Third World country if Republicans appear to have momentum to repeal and replace Obamacare. They’ll suddenly trot out indigent elderly patients, impoverished children and, of course, young professionals struggling to make ends meet.

What they won’t tell you, however, is how their program is limiting options for the very people they swear they serve. For the poor, working poor, working class and middle class in America, Medicaid has become their only choice, as private health care has become too expensive. For young professionals, purchasing insurance has become so costly that many are opting to pay a tax penalty instead of purchasing insurance that covers more than what they need.

Democrats insist they’re the only party with ideas to improve health care, and without their prized legislation in place, millions of Americans will die. The truth, however, is that conservative solutions are rooted in patient-centered ideas that lower costs, improve access, enrich the quality of care and move the country’s health care system onto a more stable, sustainable path.

But, of course, they won’t mention that.

Scare seniors into believing Republicans want to privatize Medicare.

It’s already happening. Prominent liberal commentators are screaming that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) wants to end Medicare and move all seniors to the scary dangers of the free-market world of insurance.

Well that’s not true, (as though Sen. Marco Rubio and others arguing they wouldn’t yank the Medicare from underneath their own parents wasn’t convincing enough). There are a bevy of GOP plans to address the mounting entitlement crisis — a crisis that is equally as dire as it is ignored by Democrats.

Democrats tried the “Paul Ryan pushes Granny off the cliff” ad in 2012, but exit polling showed Ryan’s role as Gov. Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick had no negative effect on the ticket.

Democrats seem likely to overplay this hand once again. Republicans have both 2010 and 2012 as plenty of proof that these attacks don’t work. Instead, if the GOP comes prepared with a reasonable solution to solve the retirement spending crisis, liberals will look totally unserious and unable to handle the significant fiscal challenges that lay ahead.

Finally, if all else fails, beg to bail out the insurance companies instead.

This is the absolute last place where the Democrats want to find themselves. After spending two decades admonishing the insurance companies (in between bribing them to support Obamacare), they might appeal to the American people to support bailing out insurers that have faced record losses due to their participation in the law.

With profits tumbling and market access diminishing for insurance companies, many planned to receive subsidies from the federal government to recoup their losses. Thanks to clever maneuvering by Rubio, the Department of Health and Human Services is prohibited from sending them bailout checks.

Now, insurance companies are suing the Obama Administration, explaining that they were promised a low risk scenario by the White House in the event that Obamacare’s individual mandate did not attract enough healthy, paying customers to cover the number of risky patients the law required they cover.

After demonizing insurance companies since HillaryCare in the early 1990s, Democrats find themselves in the peculiar position of telling the American people that in order to keep the industry afloat, the government will need to use their taxpayer money to send insurers hundreds of millions of dollars to make up for lost profits. Hardly a compelling argument.

Once they’ve exhausted all of these options — and, indeed, they’ve already begun to do so — they’ll resort to complaining Republicans have no ideas of their own to address the country’s health care needs. Too bad for them, there are dozens of proposals, all of which would do far more good and far less harm than Obamacare has already done.

Their sweeping electoral losses this November seemed to shock Democrats, in part because they chose to ignore the Obamacare crisis that was developing across America, leaving many people with less money and fewer benefits than before it passed. Their reliance upon these old arguments demonstrates just how out of touch they are with the people they’re meant to serve.

Ellen Carmichael is a senior writer for Opportunity Lives. Follow her on Twitter @ellencarmichael.

To understand why welfare programs are politically popular, consider the word. Well. Fair. ‘Welfare’ seems to embody something that makes our society healthier, happier and more just. Something inherently moral and deserving of unquestioning support. For decades, supporters of welfare have used this understanding to protect welfare programs from reform.

But come January, Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and they have big plans to reform the welfare system. This is a Republican D-Day in the war on poverty. Too long labeled – albeit sometimes fairly – as disinterested in the plight of impoverished Americans, the GOP has a chance to break the status quo.

And the status quo needs breaking.

According to the Census bureau, in 2015, more than 43 million U.S. residents were prisoners of poverty. That fact is morally damning. It has been 52 years since President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. In that time, more than $23 trillion has been spent fighting that war. Put simply, we’ve spent a lot of money for little return.

Of course, we don’t yet know what the final version of any reform legislation will look like. President Trump and Speaker Ryan have their disagreements on many issues and this might be one of them. Still, one understanding must flow throughout whatever bill reaches Trump’s desk: welfare depends on work.

Why is work so important for effective welfare reform?

A few reasons.

For a start, work is the only durable way an individual can find self-sufficiency. If we accept that welfare programs exist to support individual needs and aspirations, then employment is critical. For it is work that gives us a purpose in society. Whether a business-person or a janitor, whether a nurse or a chef, lawful work is a moral endeavor. It supports our interests (living well in the pursuit of happiness) and that of our fellow citizens (providing beneficial services). But work also serves another concern. Fairness. After all, welfare funding does not spring from the ether. It comes from the working endeavors of taxpayers. And they have the right to expect their money will be well spent.

That said, the evidence for how work helps reduce poverty is clear. The chart below shows the dramatic reduction in welfare payments that came with the 1996 welfare reforms.

Source: Heritage Foundation

But that’s just part of the picture. Today, we face new challenges. Notably, as the Manhattan Institute has shown, our current welfare system encourages economic inactivity.

Source: Manhattan Institute

As welfare programs have become more generous, more numerous, and less contingent on corollary recipient activity, more people are choosing welfare over work. That choice services two broader social problems. First and most obvious, it increases welfare spending and the national debt. Second, it encourages welfare recipients to believe that their best interests are served by not working. And that’s not true. There’s bigotry in allowing an individual to believe they are worth only a handout. American innovation teaches us that human potential is limitless.

To address these issues, the first priority is targeted local investments. Three areas immediately stand out. First, we should pursue public transport reforms that offer low-paid workers reliable, affordable, and efficient commutes. If those on welfare know they cannot easily get to work, they will have far less reason to do so.

Second, we must prioritize reforms in poorly performing schools. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie offers a good example here. He is challenging a status quo in which thousands of students from poor families have received consistently poor educations.

Third, like British conservatives, we must empower home ownership. From Chicago to Milwaukee, and in inner cities across the nation, the links between poor housing, poverty, and death are apparent. But if we give more people more stake in their communities, we’ll encourage them to make local reforms. These local solutions are often successful in that they arrive from those who know the issues best.

When we transfer power from the federal government to the state and local level, three Republican-led states show what can be achieved.

Enter Indiana’s HIP 2.0 medical insurance program. Developed by Governor and Vice President-Elect Mike Pence (R-Ind.), HIP 2.0 offers subsidized medical care to impoverished Indianans. An alternative to the Federal Medicaid system, HIP 2.0 comes with strings attached. Beneficiaries can make small contributions towards medical premiums to receive better benefits. And the program encourages participation in work-training programs. The results are showing. According to Pence, expensive emergency room visits by HIP 2.0 enrollees are lower than Medicaid enrollees by an average of 42%. The program is also very popular with enrollees. HIP 2.0’s beauty is in blending government innovation with individual responsibility. It makes users control their own costs in return for a better deal.

Next up, Kansas. Here, Gov. Sam Brownback (R-Ks.) has introduced tough requirements that require abled bodied Kansans to work for their benefits. Kansas is challenging the assumption that self-interest requires indentured government dependency.

A similar effort is underway in Maine. Here Gov. Paul LePage (R-Maine) requires food stamp recipients to find employment or volunteer in their community. Positive results have followed. As Josh Archambault reports at Forbes, program participants have seen their incomes rise by an average of 114%. That math has a social justice message. Just look at the graph below. It represents more accountability for taxpayers, and more importantly, self-sufficient and better lives.

Yet Republicans will also have to be clear about their priorities.

That’s because, as OL contributor Patrick Brennan explains, social outcomes sometimes don’t match up with short-term economic tabulations. Reducing federal spending is important, but Republicans should focus on long term rather than short term savings. Absent that understanding, the effort against poverty will fail. Applying a World War Two analogy, focusing on the short term would be to make the mistake General Eisenhower made in late 1944 Europe. Forced to choose between allocating fuel supplies to General Montgomery (who was bogged down) or General Patton (who was advancing rapidly), Eisenhower put public relations first and chose Montgomery. Many historians believe that decision delayed the collapse of Hitler’s regime.

Republicans should be bold and optimistic. As the Comeback video series from Opportunity Lives attests, human potential is not defined by government expenditure. Instead, human potential takes root in the fostering of individual aspiration and the support of society. With these welfare reforms, we can cultivate both.

Tom Rogan is a foreign policy columnist for National Review, a domestic policy columnist for Opportunity Lives, a panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a senior fellow at the Steamboat Institute. Follow him on Twitter @TomRtweets.