The Road to Damascus: U.S.-Turkish Cooperation Towards a Post-Assad Syria May 2, 2013
Electric Grid Cyber Security Initiative
The Electric Grid Cyber Security Initiative, a joint effort of BPC’s Energy and Homeland Security Projects, will develop recommendations for how multiple government agencies and private companies can protect the North American electric grid from cyber attacks. The initiative will consider how to allocate responsibility for cyber attack prevention and response, facilitate the sharing of intelligence about cyber threats and vulnerabilities with electric power companies, and ensure appropriate privacy protections for customer data.
Commission on Political Reform
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Commission on Political Reform (CPR) launches with two main purposes—to understand the causes and consequences of America’s partisan political divide and to advocate for specific electoral and congressional reforms to help Americans achieve shared national goals.
- Olympia Snowe and Dan Glickman
The immigration problem facing our country affects us all. It is an economic, national security, and human rights issue. The 2012 elections pushed the topic of immigration reform to the top of the congressional agenda. Now is the time to address this important issue and forge bipartisan solutions that will lead to practical, workable legislation.
Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative
The Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative will be independent, objective and fact-based. It will review the Dodd-Frank Act and, as appropriate, propose credible and politically achievable refinements to the Act that ensure that financial firms operate in a clear and logical regulatory framework that fairly addresses consumer and taxpayer protection, and that promotes open and competitive financial markets. The overarching objective is to promote policies that balance financial stability, economic growth, and consumer protection.
Health Care Cost Containment Initiative
With tens of millions of Americans facing uncoordinated and expensive medical care, our health care system is performing well below its potential. This failure is a threat to the nation's future health, economic viability, productivity, and ability to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Moreover, the nation's growing federal deficit and debt imposes unsustainable burdens on states, employers, workers, and their families. Excessive and wasteful health care spending contributes unnecessarily and disproportionately to this burden. Addressing out-of-control health care costs is a vital component of any long term deficit reduction strategy.
The Cyber Security Task Force brings together cyber security experts and private sector leaders to develop concrete recommendations—including legal, policy, and best practices—for addressing specific gaps in our nation’s cyber security preparedness. The task force is co-chaired by General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA and NSA, and Mort Zuckerman, CEO of Boston Properties. The task force will sequentially examine discrete cyber security policy issues.
Through BPC’s American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC), BPC will continue to advance a national clean technology innovation agenda with policymakers, the broader stakeholder community, and media. BPC will also broaden its energy innovation analysis, innovation policy, and advocacy portfolio to effectively engage in budget, tax reform, and policy discussions during 2012 and 2013.
Task Force on Defense Budget and Strategy
This is a critical moment for U.S. defense strategy. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, persistent and new threats compete for our attention. Meanwhile, budgetary pressure has forced cuts to defense spending, and additional automatic reductions through the sequester, are set to go into effect in 2013 and continue through the following decade.
In 2011, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) launched the Governors’ Council to bring pragmatic state-based perspectives to national issues. The federalist tenets at the heart of the U.S. Constitution have fuelled a dynamic debate about the balance of federal and state powers throughout our nation’s history. Many of today’s most complex and pressing challenges, from reviving the economy to controlling health care costs, are deeply entangled in the interplay between federal and state roles and responsibilities. Recognizing that governors around the country are on the frontlines of many of these challenges as leaders of our “laboratories of democracy,” BPC formed the Governors’ Council to inject into the federal discourse a strong sense of the changing landscape outside of Washington and new thinking on best practices from the states.
The Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) Housing Commission aims to reform the nation’s housing policy by crafting a package of realistic and actionable policy recommendations that respond to both the near-term and long-term challenges facing the housing sector. Making a continual effort to include both Republican and Democratic perspectives in its outreach and research, the Housing Commission will draw upon a wide range of viewpoints, bringing together housing experts, business leaders, former elected officials, academics, and other key stakeholders. Following the release of the commission’s recommendations, BPC will engage policymakers to catalyze implementation and will continue to expand and refine analysis in targeted areas.
Nuclear Initiative Co-Chair Pete Domenici (right) introduces a panel at BPC
This initiative will focus on policies at multiple levels that ensure electric system reliability and facilitate the transition to cleaner electricity and new energy technologies. A broad range of experts will assess specific transmission and reliability issues and develop recommendations to be released in early 2013. Capitalizing on the Evolving Power Sector: Policies for a Modern and Reliable U.S. Electric Grid February 7, 2013
Strategic Energy Policy Initiative
This initiative is supported by a board that includes industry executives, scientists, former government and elected officials, economists, environmental representatives, and labor leaders. During 2012, the board focused on reframing the discussion on energy policy into a coherent debate about the nation’s strategic energy challenges and goals. The board released a consensus-based report outlining its policy recommendations in early 2013.
Health Professional Workforce Initiative
The health professional workforce is at the heart of the health care delivery system. All local and national efforts to transform this system require parallel commitment, coordination, and leadership from our health professionals. In this transformative time, it is critical that providers are ready and able to play new roles and acquire new skills to effectively deliver health care in the future.
Policymakers and leaders from every sector of health care agree that innovation and information technology (IT) is needed to help address the most pressing challenges confronting the U.S. health care system—rising costs, eroding coverage, and inconsistent quality. A number of efforts focused on addressing these health system challenges are now underway at the federal, state, and local levels. The Health Innovation Initiative conducts research and collaborates with experts and stakeholders across every sector of health care to develop recommendations that promote innovation and the use of IT to support improvements in the cost, quality, and patient experience of care.
America’s economy—in fact our way of life—is highly dependent on secure, affordable, and reliable energy. Though the U.S. has abundant and diverse sources of domestic energy, our energy challenges are great: we face a complex array of often-competing federal and state taxes, subsidies and regulations; a weak economy struggling to invest/deploy new energy technology; extensive global oil market risks; increasing world-wide competition for energy; and rising global greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental concerns. Confronting those challenges as the U.S. invests in economic recovery and confronts an unsustainable national debt creates difficult but necessary policy choices.
Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative is a year-long effort to enhance physical activity and nutritional opportunities for all Americans. Led by a bipartisan group of four former U.S. cabinet secretaries, the initiative brings together key experts, policymakers, and stakeholders to identify opportunities for collaborative action in four priority areas: investing in children’s health; creating healthy schools; improving the health of communities; and developing healthy institutions.
Strategic Public Diplomacy Initiative
The Foreign Policy Project's (FPP) Russia Initiative will work to create a more cohesive U.S. strategy towards Russia—one that is designed to better advance U.S. security and economic interests and builds on the two countries’ common interests. Co-chaired by Senator Chuck Robb and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, the initiative will offer ways to construct an improved bilateral relationship in the energy, business, trade, and investment sectors—areas critical to our collective future.
In 2008, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) launched the Leaders’ Project on the State of American Health Care, an effort to produce a comprehensive health reform plan that could win support from both Republicans and Democrats. Former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole worked together to negotiate a plan to ensure all Americans have quality, affordable health care. It was released in June 2009. Now that health reform has been signed into law, the BPC will turn to the next logical step—developing a bipartisan approach to help states meet their ongoing budgetary, demographic and health reform challenges.
In November 2010, the Bipartisan Policy Center launched the Democracy Project – a bipartisan initiative that analyzes and advocates for improvements to our democratic institutions. Co-chaired by former Secretaries Dan Glickman and Dirk Kempthorne and AOL co-founder Steve Case, the Democracy Project has assembled an Advisory Committee consisting of some of the nation’s top government, business, civic, military and academic leaders. Despite their ideological differences, all share a concern about the tenor of our political discourse and a growing need to confront our many challenges together – from the national debt to national security.
Domenici-Rivlin Debt Reduction Task Force
Updated Documents
Domenici-Rivlin 2.0, the Fiscal Cliff and a Framework to Bridge Them
Fundamental, Pro-Growth Tax Reform
Restoring America’s Future is a plan for that new course. It was developed by a bipartisan task force that is chaired by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House Budget Director and Federal Reserve Vice Chair Alice Rivlin, and includes 19 former White House and Cabinet officials, former Senate and House members, former governors and mayors, and business, labor, and other leaders. The plan reduces and stabilizes the debt at 60 percent of the economy, and it reforms personal and corporate taxes to make America more competitive, ensures that Social Security can pay benefits to future generations, and controls health care costs.
Additional Resources
To be sure, Restoring America’s Future makes tough choices. It freezes discretionary spending, reforms programs, ends tax deductions, and raises new taxes. But, by stabilizing the debt, reforming the tax code, and controlling health care costs, it lays the groundwork for a brighter future.
Robust capital formation has long been the hallmark of U.S. economic strength, business growth, job creation and our nation’s international competitiveness. The recent crisis in financial markets and accompanying recession was in no small part caused by outmoded financial regulations, poor regulatory oversight, and business practices that sought to exploit associated economic inefficiencies. Strong reforms are needed to restore confidence in the system. However, if done poorly, reform can stifle innovation and put the United States at a relative disadvantage on the global stage.
The Economic Policy Project (EPP) focuses on federal economic and fiscal policy and its ramifications within the larger national economy. Concentrating on federal debt, deficits and budgeting, EPP also works closely with other policy projects at the Bipartisan Policy Center when their issues overlap with federal fiscal matters. Primary activities of EPP are the creation of comprehensive federal budgets, including highly-detailed recommendations for both Congress and other policymaking institutions. In addition, EPP staff analyzes congressional budget proposals, budgets offered by the administration, and technical analyses of legislative procedure and the congressional budget process.
The Homeland Security Project’s (HSP) core mission is to be an active, bipartisan voice on homeland and national security issues. The project is co-chaired by former Governor Tom Kean and former Congressman Lee Hamilton who led the 9/11 Commission’s bipartisan 20-month investigation into the September 11th attacks and forged unanimous agreement on its 41 recommendations – the vast majority of which were enacted into law.
“[W]e are… developing a strategy to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon." -Barack Obama, Camp LeJeune, N.C., February 27, 2009In this, our third report on this most serious challenge, we elucidate the outcomes we are likely to face if we do not now act decisively to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We recognize the difficulties we face in addressing this threat. Any solution requires imagination, resolve and risks. But compared with what will happen when time runs out, the choice cannot be clearer.
Stabilizing Fragile States Initiative
"...over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit." Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2009
The Foreign Policy Project (FPP) is committed to developing realistic and robust bipartisan policy recommendations for the principal national security and foreign policy issues confronting the United States.
National Transportation Policy Project
The National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) is bringing new voices to the transportation debate to create a dynamic and enduring vision for the future of federal surface transportation policy. The project is composed of a broad coalition of transportation policy experts, business and civic leaders, and is chaired by four distinguished former elected officials who served at the federal, state, and local levels.
