CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE DEMOCRACY

Grand Bargain Project Framework Agreement

Last revised April 18, 2025

In our efforts to reunite America, the Grand Bargain Project has found that a practical plan to advance six objectives can unite far more of the country than any alternative. The six goals:

Boosting economic opportunity, productivity, and growth
Reforming education so students, K-12 and beyond, reach their potential
Making healthcare more effective and less costly
Curbing the national debt
Promoting more efficient, cleaner and reliable energy
Making the tax code fairer and simpler

To find reforms that Americans would far prefer over where they are now, we enlisted various former federal officials, think tank leaders, stakeholders and political activists to offer ideas that would benefit far more Americans, and at lower costs, than current policies in these six areas.

To refine the initial recommendations, we held workshops and focus groups among diverse citizens left, right, and center; coastal and heartland; young and old. By now, 90+ percent who see the evolving Framework Agreement say the total package would be better than the status quo — for them, their families, members of their organizations, and the country.

As we engage each congressional district across the country, we expect that initial 90 percent figure to decline but still remain above 75 percent. To win over the highest percentage possible, we will conduct online and community workshops in which we invite participants to rate each reform from:

a) Critical to me, my family and/or the country

b) Good idea

c) Not Sure

d) Dislike it

e) Hate it.

We will then ask: “Can you imagine any Congress and Administration enacting the parts you most like?” (From June 2024 to mid-March 2025, nearly everyone has answered “no.”)

Then “To get the parts you see as critical, could you accept the parts you would otherwise oppose?” (Based on the pattern thus far, we expect 75 to 90 percent to say “yes.”)

The rest of the workshop will consist of the people saying yes negotiating with those saying no. The purpose: explore what changes would induce the no’s to get on board — without losing any yes’s.

We will incorporate that feedback into the evolving Framework, so that we can tell political leaders:

This represents the voice and will of the American people. If you want them to believe you’re acting in their interests, this is a better roadmap than any other.

The current proposals and rationales are:

Americans’ dissatisfaction with the economy and their role in it are near record highs. Growth has trended down for decades, reflecting chronic unmet needs. Lower income workers lack incentives and support to advance. Most workers lack the skills to get good jobs in current and emerging industries. Investments in basic research that can spark innovation nationwide have been falling. Rural and lower income urban communities have lacked the investments necessary to prosper.
The proposals to meet these needs are:

Incentivize community colleges, employers, unions and other programs to train workers for higher paying jobs, particularly in fast-growing industries
Reduce regulations that restrict construction of new affordable housing and infrastructure
Support rural communities and low-income urban areas with education, training, broadband access, and investment incentives to promote entrepreneurship and job creation
Increase child-care subsidies to low-income families so parents can choose whether to work or stay home with young children
Expand the earned income tax credit and other earning subsidies to low wage workers
Support workers’ rights to form, join and contribute to unions, and their rights not to
Double federal spending on basic research to $200 billion a year, and improve the pipeline from publicly funded research to commercialization

Skills and education are key drivers of economic growth and individual incomes. Yet educational attainment was declining before the Covid pandemic. It has fallen significantly since then, and is now among the worst in the developed world.

The educational system’s main problems are: low overall skills; dramatic differences in achievement across states; an over reliance on standardized testing, unequal access to the internet and unequal student performance by class, race and gender.
This is not due to declining funding. Public school revenue per student in 2019 was four times that in 1960 adjusted for inflation. But there is a very large variation by region.

The initial proposals are to:

Revise educational goals and standards to include both academic and life skills, such as teamwork and resilience
Reform teacher training and professional development to boost teachers’ performance
Increase teacher and school accountability for students’ performance
Significantly increase pay for more effective teachers
Develop programs to increase lower income parents’ support for their children’s learning
Expand family choice among public and charter schools
Increase per-student support for under-resourced schools
Provide adequate funding for school facilities and universal broadband
Help state and local education agencies build up their evaluation and research capabilities

The US spends 50 percent more on health care per capita than any other nation – almost 18 percent of GDP versus 10 percent on average in other developed countries. Yet health outcomes in the US are worse than in any other developed country. Life expectancy is trending downward. Competition among hospitals and insurance companies is shrinking, driving up prices for consumers. Drug companies are increasingly at odds with insurance companies and consumers, over equitable pricing and delivery systems.
The healthcare system — consisting of for-profit, non-profit, religious, municipal, tribal, state, civilian, military, federal and other providers — is uniquely fragmented, complex, costly, inefficient, and confusing for patients and providers. The system is designed to manage illness, not improve health.

Yet a complete system overhaul — or an entirely new business model — is politically unfeasible and would entail major unintended consequences.

Current federal programs — Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and food-nutrition assistance — are instead more pragmatic levers for rapid change.

To shift incentives and practices from managing illness to instead keeping people healthy and productive, the initial proposals are:

Promote integrated approaches and support systems for overall health, especially in distressed areas
Coordinate public education for healthier lifestyles and prevention, especially about obesity and nutrition, and increase funding for good nutrition through existing Federal programs
Restructure Medicare and Medicaid by ending payment for each test and procedure and, instead, require each plan to - measurably - reduce costs and improve health outcomes
Expand support for public and private Accountable Care Organizations, which provide services selectively, based on which yield better health outcomes at lower cost
Expand free meals to low-income schools, including in the summer, to ensure that low-income children have access to nutritious foods
Prevent local concentration of ownership of health care providers
Expand health care support in rural areas, where private providers lack incentives to provide services
Expand the use of federal price negotiations to manage the cost of pharmaceuticals

Current energy policies are inefficient, costly, economically unsustainable and contradictory, subsidizing both fossil fuels and renewables. All efforts to date have in fact failed to slow the extreme weather irreparably harming millions of Americans, the economy and the environment.

Economists right, left and center largely agree that individuals, businesses and countries would balance the use of fossil fuels and renewables far more wisely if they paid a carbon tax on domestic goods and a carbon tariff on foreign ones. In addition, to create more efficient and reliable energy markets, the US needs to build a far more coherent energy infrastructure, especially transmission lines, which would get both traditional and clean fuels to consumers at the lowest cost.

To advance these goals, the initial proposals are:

Repeal all demonstrably inefficient energy subsidies, regulations and legislation.
Place a price on carbon emissions of $51 per ton, phased in over three years, yielding $2 trillion in the next decade.
Create an equivalent carbon border tariff on imports from countries that do not price carbon
Offset the impact of carbon taxes and tariffs on low-income families and rural communities, by adjusting income taxes accordingly
Support methane capture and reuse technologies
To further reduce methane emissions, hold current and former owners of abandoned fossil fuel wells liable for capping those wells
To efficiently transmit energy nationwide, give Federal agencies increased authority to plan, site and permit transmission lines and other energy infrastructure across state lines

The federal debt exceeds 100 percent of GDP, or 120 percent if entitlement trust funds are included. Both figures are clearly headed higher, which will severely limit our ability to meet crises.

Furthermore, the US government spends six times as much per senior as it does per child under 18; favors benefits for well-off groups over long-term growth for the entire nation; and shortchanges investments that would enable ordinary citizens to contribute more to the economy and earn more.

The debt is being given by very inefficient healthcare, rapidly rising interest, and growing Social Security costs outstripping revenue. Medicare and Social Security’s unfunded liabilities are over $80 trillion. Both programs are on track to become insolvent by 2026.

To control the debt in ways that will improve nearly every family’s quality of life, current proposals are:

Increase investments in younger generations, education and research, reducing poverty, and increasing upward mobility (see previous sections)
Increase taxes on those who can most afford it (see tax proposals below)
Slow the future growth of Social Security benefits for high earners, while increasing benefits to low earners
Raise the retirement age for those who can keep working, but not for those who cannot
Contain the cost of Medicare (see health care section above)
Offset new Federal spending with new revenue or cuts elsewhere, except in emergencies

The tax code has been heavily politicized in ways that reduce the tax base, distort investment incentives, favor the well-off, and produce too little revenue to contain the debt.

To make the tax system more equitable, cover increased investment in education and the workforce, and prevent the debt from rising to crisis levels, the proposals are

Sharply reduce deductions, exclusions and credits that mostly benefit high-income families
Lower income taxes on low-income families
To reduce tax evasion, introduce a value added tax (VAT), by which each producer in the supply chain pays a tax on the value they add to goods and services they deliver
Refund the VAT to low-income consumers
Allow businesses to deduct all expenses, except interest, in the year paid
Eliminate taxation distinctions between corporate and non-corporate businesses.
Tax the value of capital assets at the time they are inherited, eliminating the stepped-up basis that leaves untaxed all the gains since first purchased.
Lower the size of estates exempt from tax (currently $27 million per couple)
Tax inheritances based on income of the beneficiary not the deceased

As stated at the start, we expect citizens and interest groups to oppose some of these ideas. So, we ask:

1. Do you think the proposals that would most advance your, your organization’s and the nation’s interests will materialize in the next few years?

2. If not, are the proposals you like beneficial enough for you to live with the other parts?

3. If no, what changes would get you to say “yes” while also being acceptable to most of the country?

We will distill answers to these questions into the evolving Framework, so we can present it to political leaders as representing the voice and will of the American people – and justifiably say:

To show your constituents that you are acting in their interests, you may want to consider the Framework as your roadmap for America’s future.

Join us today

ENDORSE THE GRAND BARGAIN

If you support the process of refining the Grand Bargain to reflect the will of the American people to spur the administration and Congress to embrace the result as the roadmap for our future.