The Grand Bargain Project is designed to unite Americans around a practical plan to advance six objectives that 90+ percent of citizens see as critical to their future.

The People Behind The Grand Bargain

We unite Americans around a practical plan to advance six objectives that 90+ percent of citizens see as critical to their future.

Experience

01

complex Care

With decades of collective experience and specialized knowledge, we're here to navigate you through the complex world of real estate.

Expertise

01

Real Estate agents

We're not just real estate agents; we're your trusted advisors, here to help you make informed decisions and achieve your property dreams.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We thereby need the grand bargain if the American people and our democracy are to thrive.

Process

Process

Process

Process

Our Team

Sol Erdman

Founder & CEO

Debilyn Molineaux

Executive Director

Travis Robinson

Managing Director

David Fairman

Senior Advisor

Liz Sheldon

Senior Advisor

Vinay Orekondy

Partnerships Director

Richard Eidlin

Senior Advisor

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

Barry Anderson. Former Acting Director, Congressional Budget Office

Kristina Becvar. Executive Director, Bridge Alliance, Co-Publisher, The Fulcrum

Steve Bartlett. Former President of the Financial Services Roundtable and former mayor of Dallas

Andrew Card. Former Chief of Staff to the President of the United States

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

DeVone Holt. President and CEO, Muhammad Ali Center

Adi Ignatius. Editor, Harvard Business Review

Francis Johnson. Former 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

Paul Kramer, Founder and CEO of the Institute for Youth in Policy

Carolyn Lukensmeyer. Executive Director Emeritus, National Institute for Civil Discourse

Seth Radwell. Author of American Schism, winner of the International Book Award for Best General Nonfiction

John Rogers. Founder, RL Leaders

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

David Walker. Former Comptroller General of the United States

Charles Wheelan. Founder and Co-Chair, Unite America


The purpose of the grand bargain is to....

The Grand Bargain Project has gathered concrete evidence that common-sense reforms in all six of the above areas, if combined, would yield vast benefits to society — enough so that nearly every American would strongly prefer the total package over the country’s current direction.

Grand

bargain

Grand

bargain

Support Us

in advancing six objectives necessary for the American people to thrive.

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Blog Articles

Compassion as a Catalyst: Bridging Divides to Build a Better Future

Blog

What does it take for compassion to evolve from a personal value into a catalyst for collective action and systemic reform?

The Hidden Cost of Legislative Silos: Why America Needs Holistic Reform

Blog

America’s laws often function in isolation, crafted to address specific problems but rarely designed to work together.

Rethinking Healthcare: Affordable, Accessible, and Effective for All

Blog

Why does the U.S. spend more on healthcare than any other developed nation, yet struggle with lower life expectancy, higher costs, and limited access?

01.

Blog Topic

Blog

General opinion and developments around the Grand Bargain

02.

Blog Topic

News

News about the Grand Bargain and organization as a whole