March 20, 2015Article

Social Innovation Research Center: A Republican View of Evidence: An Interview with Congressman Todd Young

by Patrick Lester

Federal/ 2015/

This is the first in a series of interviews with influential Republicans and Democrats in Congress about evidence and innovation issues.

Congressman Todd Young (R-IN) is seen as a Republican leader on social welfare issues. He is the second-ranking Republican member of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, which conducted a hearing on evidence and social policy earlier this week. His subcommittee is also likely to be the starting point for any evidence-based bills that move in the House in this session.

We asked him about his recently-introduced Social Impact Partnership Act, as well as the Republican vision for evidence and innovation in social policy more generally

SIRC: Thank you for joining us, Congressman Young. Let’s start our discussion with a bill you cosponsored this year with Congressman John Delaney (D-MD), called the Social Impact Partnership Act (H.R. 1336). Our readers are fairly familiar with its broad outlines. Can you tell us what motivated you personally to introduce this bill?

Congressman Young: Before I served in Congress, I was on the board of an organization that worked with homeless veterans, and as an attorney I provided pro bono legal services to couples looking to adopt. These are some of the seemingly intractable issues we grapple with as a country, and never seem to make enough of an impact.

I was excited to become a member of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources because they work directly with these challenging problems. Early on, we became aware of some phenomenal reforms they had been making in the United Kingdom that were showing some promise. One of them was the social impact bond financing mechanism, which I quickly realized could have broad application here in the states. As I began talking with the UK government, I learned most of their interventions were adopted from U.S.-based civil society, which gave me more confidence in their applicability here.

It took our team about a year to work through all the issues of adapting it from their parliamentary system of government and coming up with something that would work in our presidential system. Also, it’s worth noting that we sunset the bill after ten years; if the whole point is to evaluate policies to see what works, I think that same standard ought to be applied to the underlying bill.