CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE DEMOCRACY

Grand Bargain Project Framework Agreement

Last revised March 24, 2025

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

Boosting economic mobility, 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

Progress toward these goals has stagnated in recent decades, largely because each law in these six areas was enacted to satisfy some voters, some interest groups, and some politicians – at one point in time. Current policies thereby contradict one another, letting our chronic problems grow worse.

The project team therefore sought common-sense reforms in all six areas that, when combined, would benefit each American – enough so that the vast majority would prefer the total package over where they are now.

To achieve that goal in under a year, we integrated ideas from ideologically diverse former federal officials and think tank leaders, key stakeholders in the six areas, and a wide range of civic leaders, political activists and ordinary citizens. We distilled that input into a first draft of this Framework Agreement.

While each person who has seen it has found parts they disliked, 90+ percent said the total package would be better than the status quo -- for them, their families, members of their organizations, and the country.

As we expand our reach to 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) Indifferent

d) Dislike it, or see it as none of the federal government’s business

e) Hate it.

We will then ask: “Can you imagine politicians enacting the parts you most like?” (In the past, 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 to find out what the latter need to get on board -- without losing any yes’s.

We will incorporate that feedback into future iterations of the 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. And growth has been trending down for decades. These trends reflect chronic unmet needs: Lower income workers lack incentives and support to advance. Most workers lack sufficient skills training to get good jobs in current and emerging industries. Investments in basic research that can be translated into innovation nationwide has been falling. Rural and lower income urban communities have lacked enough investment in housing, human capital and digital infrastructure to prosper.

The proposals to meet these needs are:

Reduce economically unsound regulations that restrict construction of new affordable housing and infrastructure
Expand the earned income tax credit and other earning subsidies to low wage workers
Increase child-care subsidies to low-income families to enable parents to choose whether to work or to stay at home with very young children
Incentivize community colleges, other skills training programs, employers and unions to work together to produce workers with the skills to obtain higher paying jobs, particularly in fast-growing industries
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
Support rural communities and low-income urban areas with education, training, broadband access, and investment incentives to promote entrepreneurship and job creation.

Skills and education are key drivers of economic growth and individual incomes. Yet educational attainment in the US was declining before the Covid pandemic. They have fallen significantly since then, and are 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 measures to include both core academic skills and cross-cutting skills and traits such as teamwork, and resilience
Revise teaching standards and accountability systems to measure the full set of skills and traits students need to develop
Ensure that teacher training and professional development produce high performing teachers
Significantly increase pay for more effective teachers
Increase teacher and school accountability for students’ performance
Develop programs to increase lower income parents’ support for their children’s learning
Expand family choice among public schools, including charter schools
Ensure learning opportunities for all students through increased per-student support for under-resourced schools
Provide adequate capital funding for school facilities and universal broadband access.
Build up the evaluation and research capacities of state and local education agencies

The US spends 50 percent more on health care per capita than any other nation – 17 percent of GDP versus an average of 10 percent in other developed countries. Yet health outcomes in the US are measurably worse than in other developed countries. 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 is designed to manage illness, not improve health. The system — consisting of for-profit, non-profit, religious, municipal, tribal, state, civilian, military, federal and other providers — is also uniquely fragmented, overly complex, costly, inefficient, and confusing for patients and providers alike.

Fixing these problems with a complete system overhaul — or an entirely new business model — seems politically unfeasible and would entail major unintended consequences.

Instead, current federal programs — food and nutrition assistance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, etc. — can be levers for change.

The following proposals aim to shift the health care system’s incentives and practices from managing illness toward keeping people healthy and productive:

Promote integrated approaches to overall health, especially in distressed areas, and support systems for lower-income populations to reduce health risks (see also economic policies for lower income workers above).
Coordinate public education for healthier lifestyles and prevention, especially about obesity and nutrition, and increase funding for good nutrition through existing Federal programs.
Expand free meals to low-income schools, including in the summer, to ensure that low-income children have access to nutritious foods.
Use Federal and state regulatory authority to prevent excessive concentration of ownership of health care providers at local or regional level.
Expand Federal and state support for health care provision in rural areas, where private health providers do not have adequate incentives to provide services.
Continue to refine Medicare Advantage regulations, so that Medicare Advantage produces consistent cost savings over traditional Medicare for the government and participating seniors, while meeting standards of care.
Continue to develop and support Accountable Care Organizations.
Expand the use of Medicare drug price negotiations to manage the cost of pharmaceuticals.
Significantly improve measurement of each Medicare plan’s health outcomes, so those failing to provide quality, cost-effective care are replaced by those meeting higher standards.

Current energy policies are inefficient, costly and economically unsustainable, including contradictory subsidies and mandates for fossil fuels and renewables. Furthermore, extreme weather, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, is irreparably harming millions of Americans, the economy and the environment.

The best way to maximize efficient use of fossil fuels, while accelerating a transition to cleaner energy, would be to adopt carbon pricing and carbon tariffs. Both measures would give individuals, businesses and countries strong incentives to reduce emissions efficiently and invest in new technologies for generating clean energy, while leveling the playing field with foreign competitors. In addition, to create efficient and reliable energy markets, the US needs to make it easier to build energy infrastructure, especially transmission lines, which would facilitate the movement of traditional and clean fuels to consumers.

The following proposals aim to advance these energy goals at lowest cost to consumers and in ways that boost economic growth.

Create a carbon price of $51/ton (the federal government’s estimate of each ton’s social cost), phased in over three years, yielding almost $2 trillion in the next decade. To offset the impact on low-income families and rural communities, adjust income taxes accordingly (including fully refundable tax credits).
Create an equivalent carbon border tariff, to be imposed on imports from countries that do not price carbon.
Hold current and former owners of abandoned fossil fuel wells liable for capping those wells to reduce methane emissions, similar to requirements for cleanup of hazardous waste sites.
Support methane capture and reuse technologies.
To ensure efficient transmission of energy from renewable sources to areas that need it, give Federal government agencies increased authority to plan, site and permit transmission lines and other energy infrastructure that crosses state lines.
Repeal demonstrably ineffective or inefficient energy subsidies and regulations, such as the renewable fuel standard for ethanol.

The federal debt exceeds 100 percent of GDP excluding entitlement trust funds, or 120 percent if they are included. Both figures are clearly headed higher. This debt burden is limiting our ability to meet the country’s needs and invest in its future.

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

The prime drivers of debt are interest, Social Security and healthcare. Medicare, whose unfunded liabilities now exceed $75 trillion, is on track to become insolvent in 12 years; Social Security in nine.

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

Increase spending that will spark growth by focusing more on younger generations, education and research, reducing poverty, and increasing upward mobility (see economic mobility and education proposals above).
Increase taxes, primarily on those who can most afford it (see tax proposals below).
Slow the real growth of Social Security benefits scheduled for medium and high earners retiring in the future, while increasing benefits to low earners, so those who worked all their lives receive retirement income above the poverty line.
Raise the retirement age for those who can work but not for those who cannot.
Contain the cost of Medicare (see the section on health care above).
Require new Federal spending be offset 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 for individual taxes are:

Sharply reduce deductions, exclusions and credits that mostly benefit high-income families
Lower income taxes on low-income families.
Introduce a Federal value added tax (VAT) and incentivize states to replace their sales taxes with VATs, offsetting both costs to low income consumers through cash refunds.
Allow businesses to deduct all expenses in the year made
Eliminate business deductions for interest
Eliminate taxation distinctions between corporate and non-corporate businesses.
Tax the value of inheritances at the time they are transferred, 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 object to some of these ideas. So, we ask:

1. Do you expect the proposals that would most advance your, your organization’s and the nation’s interests to 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?

By distilling answers to these questions into the next iteration of the Framework, we intend to present it to political leaders as representing the voice and will of the American people.

We will then suggest: If you want to show your constituents you are acting in their interests, you may want to consider the Framework as your roadmap for the 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.