People | Grand Bargain Project

Our process

01.

Proof of Concept

Various audiences, asked if they prefer the combined reforms over the country’s current direction, have overwhelmingly answered yes, including:

97%

of attendees at our Braver Angels workshop in June

93%

of major stakeholder organizations interviewed to date

92%

92 % of attendees at Young Presidents Organization meeting in August

80%

of high-profile political activists, left, right and center interviewed

In effect, a grand bargain focusing on these six issues could unite far more of the country than anything else has in recent times.

02.

Spark a Grassroots Movement

Various grassroots organizations are working with us to show their members how the grand bargain could unite most Americans into a movement large enough to promote unprecedented progress in all six areas andreverse the downward slide of our democracy.
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We are also using social-digital media to reach citizens who hunger for progress in these six areas, but feel powerless to affect change, the so-called “exhausted
majority.” Our message: by uniting around a common-sense grand bargain, we would become a movement that at last exerts influence proportional to our numbers.

Join the Movement

03.

Expected Impact

A critical mass of Americans, influencers and stakeholders will increasingly unite around the grand bargain as a roadmap for our future.
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After a historically divisive election, the next President and Congress will have every incentive to seek strong public support — by endorsing a practical plan for advancing the objectives that nearly every American sees as critical to them.
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An ambitious goal. But no one else has offered a credible way to unite Americans left, right and center; young and old, white and of color; coastal and heartland.
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We thereby need the grand bargain if the American people and our democracy are to thrive.

Process

Our Team

Sol Erdman

Founder & CEO

Travis Robinson

Managing Director

David Fairman

Senior Advisor

Liz Sheldon

Senior Advisor

Vinay Orekondy

Partnerships Director

Richard Eidlin

Senior Advisor

Paul Kramer

Senior Advisor & Head of Special Projects

Abbad Diraneyya

Knowledge & Strategy Manager

Kennith Lee

Media & Design Intern

Howard “Bud” Wilson

Advisor

Expert Team

Eric Hanushek. Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution (Stanford), specializing in economic analysis of educational issues. Won the Yidan Prize for research.

Bill Hoagland. Senior Vice President, Bipartisan Policy Center. Former Director of the Senate Budget Committee. Participated in major federal budget negotiations throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Founder and President, American Action Forum. Former Director of the Congressional Budget Office. Former senior economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Glenn Hubbard. President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Government. Specializes in budget, tax, and economic policies. Serves as a consistent resource on Capitol Hill and international media outlets.

Maya MacGuineas. President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Government. Specializes in budget, tax, and economic policies. Serves as a consistent resource on Capitol Hill and international media outlets.

Richard V. Reeves. Senior Fellow, Brookings. Specializes in economic studies. Former European Business Speaker of the Year. Former principal policy advisor to the Minister of Welfare Reform in Great Britain.

Robert Reischauer. President Emeritus, Urban Institute. Former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Former trustee of Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.

Gerard Robinson. Fellow of Practice, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (UVA). Former Secretary of Education in Virginia. Former Commissioner of Education in Florida.

Isabel Sawhill (Team Co-Leader). Senior Fellow and former Director of Economic Studies at Brookings. Former Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, Northwestern. Former Director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings. Scholar at Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Richard Schmalensee. Former Dean of Sloan School of Management, MIT. Former Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Eugene Steuerle. Fellow, Urban Institute. Former Deputy Secretary for Treasury. Co-founder and former President of National Tax Association. One of the chief architects of the 1986 Tax Reform Act.

Michael Strain (Team Co-Leader). Director of Economic Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute. Member of Aspen Economic Strategy Group. Research fellow at Germany’s IZA Institute of Labor Economics.

Board of Advisors

Tom Daschle former majority leader of the U.S. Senate
Andrew Card former chief of staff to the President of the United States
Barry Anderson former acting director, Congressional Budget Office
Steve Bartlett former president of the Financial Services Roundtable and former mayor of Dallas
Larry Diamond senior fellow, Hoover Institution; founding co-editor, Journal of Democracy
Francis Fukuyama professor, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Hahrie Han inaugural director, SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University
Jake Harriman founder and CEO, More Perfect Union
Adi Ignatius editor, Harvard Business Review
Francis Johnson president, Take Back Our Republic
Kelly Johnston former Secretary of the U.S. Senate
Thomas Kahn distinguished fellow, Center for Congressional & Presidential Studies, American University
Joseph V Kennedy former senior economist with the Joint Economic Committee in Congress
Margo King collaborator, Threshold Foundation, Mediators Foundation
John Steiner co-founder of the Bridge Alliance and the Social Venture Network
Eugene Steuerle Richard Fischer chair at the Urban Institute; co-founder, Tax Policy Center
Lawrence Susskind vice chair and co-founder, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School
Jerry Taylor co-founder and former president of the Niskanen Center
Charles Wheelan founder and co-chair, Unite America