CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE DEMOCRACY

39 Grand Bargain Reforms

Updated March 2026

Economic Mobility growth

THE INDIVIDUAL PROPOSALS:

Create incentives for community colleges, employers, unions and other providers to constantly improve and expand programs that train workers for higher paying jobs, especially in fast-growing industries
Reduce regulations that restrict construction of new affordable housing and infrastructure
Support rural and low-income urban areas with education, training, universal broadband access, and investment incentives to promote entrepreneurship and job creation
Establish an independent agency to evaluate how each Artificial Intelligence initiative is promoting overall progress for ordinary Americans, such as improvements in skills, health, jobs and job quality
Expand earning subsidies for low-wage workers with children
Support workers’ rights to form, join and contribute to unions – and their rights not to
Boost federal spending on basic research, and improve the pipeline from publicly funded research to commercialization

K-12 Eduation

THE INDIVIDUAL PROPOSALS:

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
Hold teachers and schools to account for students’ progress
Significantly increase pay for more effective teachers
Promote more instruction time, high expectations, frequent teacher feedback, tailoring instruction to students’ performance & tutoring as needed
Develop programs to increase lower income parents’ support for their children’s learning
Expand families’ opportunities to choose among public and charter schools
Increase per-student support for under-resourced schools
Help state and local education agencies build up their evaluation and research capabilities

Healthcare

THE INDIVIDUAL PROPOSALS:

Expand support for overall community health, especially in areas where providers lack incentives to go – rural and distressed communities
Coordinate public education and increase funding for healthier lifestyles, nutrition and prevention, especially about obesity.
Require each Medicare and Medicaid plan to - measurably - reduce costs and improve their patients’ health outcomes. And stop paying providers for each test and procedure they perform
Support public and private providers that focus on producing the best health outcomes at the lowest cost (such as Kaiser Permanente)
Expand free meals to low-income schools year round to ensure that poor children have access to nutritious foods
Prevent any business from buying up a monopoly of health care providers in any region
Expand federal price negotiations to manage the cost of pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs

Energy Policy

THE INDIVIDUAL PROPOSALS:

Repeal energy subsidies, regulations and legislation whose costs exceed the benefits
Place a price on carbon emissions of at least $51 per ton. And cut income taxes accordingly on low-income and rural families
To level the playing field with countries that do not put a price on carbon emissions, create a $51 per ton tariff on their products
To reduce methane emissions, support reuse technologies and hold current and former owners of abandoned fossil fuel wells liable for capping those wells
To move energy across state lines efficiently, increase Federal agencies’ authority to plan and issue permits for energy infrastructure, including transmission lines

Taxes

THE INDIVIDUAL PROPOSALS:

Sharply reduce deductions, exclusions and credits that mostly help high-income families
To encourage investment, allow businesses to deduct all expenses, including capital assets, but excluding interest, in the year paid
To reduce evasion and promote exports, place a 6% value added tax (VAT) on goods and services at each point in the supply chain -- and rebate the amount to low-income consumers
Boost Social Security’s cost-effectiveness by raising benefits for low earners, while slowing growth of benefits for high earners, and raise the retirement age for those who can still work
End taxation distinctions between corporate and non-corporate businesses
Tax the gains on capital assets when they are inherited, ending the ability to avoid such taxes
Lower the size of estates exempt from tax (currently $30 million per couple)

Federal Spending & Debt

THE PARTIAL SOLUTION

To push the debt below 100% of GDP by 2030 -- while also paying for improvements in economic mobility, health and education - the following ideas from earlier sections would, overall, yield $1 trillion annually in savings and revenue:

The Healthcare productivity reforms
Ending fossil fuel subsidies and putting a price on carbon
Slashing tax deductions for the well-off
The value added tax

THE INDIVIDUAL PROPOSALS:

To potentially save another $100 billion a year, invite former Secretaries of Defense from both parties to develop a plan for simultaneously increasing defense preparedness while cutting costs – and require Congress to vote the plan up-or-down

Congressional Reform

THE INDIVIDUAL PROPOSALS:

Replace congressional committees divided along partisan lines with task forces designed to resolve problems by:

- Asking each group of lawmakers who share priorities on the task force's topic to choose a spokesperson

- Any spokesperson who wanted to advance their group's priorities would need to hash out differences with the others

- If the spokespeople reach an agreement, each could pitch it to their colleagues

Enact legislation to open up primaries, so that every voter has a voice, and candidates across the spectrum compete on a level playing field
Enact legislation to prohibit either party from drawing congressional districts to boost its odds winning elections

Reforms