One of the most interesting developments in the current campaign comes from the Brookings Institution in partnership with ABC News (a thanks to ABC for helping to sponsor this effort). Subtitled, “Independent Ideas for Out Next President,” Opportunity 08 is a must visit for anyone interested in the current campaign. Brookings describes the effort:
As we enter a presidential race with wide-open primaries in both political parties and enormous debate about the direction for the country, there is a unique opportunity to discuss solutions to America’s most pressing policy challenges. Opportunity 08 aims to help presidential candidates and the public focus on critical issues facing the nation, providing ideas, policy forums, and information on a broad range of domestic and foreign policy questions.
Opportunity 08 is currently divided into three main areas: our world, our society, and our prosperity. Each of those is subdivided into issues such as Iraq, China, Iran, election reform, immigration, budget, health care and taxes. The major thrust of the effort is to apply Brookings’ considerable research muscle to generating information and even policy suggestions for each of these issues. Most of all, Brookings and ABC are committed to having informed voters and candidates. The effort is nonpartisan as has always been the case with Brookings’ research.
So far it has generated the following reports: “High Cost of Health Care,” “Sustainable Development,” “Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Workforce,” “Reforming U.S. Immigration Policy,” and “The State of the Military Today.” Obviously there is not enough space in this post to delve into all the reports, but trust me, each of them contains not only worthwhile material but ideas that will give you a new perspective on the issues.
The immigration report recommends the next President, in order to ensure the economic, social, and civic integration of illegal immigrants, should support policies that:
- recognize the economic role and contribution of undocumented workers by implementing an earned legalization program
- create an Impact Aid Program that would offset state and local expenditures related to the program
- create a New Americans Initiative—a program to support state-level public-private partnership that would help all immigrants integrate into American society in a systematic, coordinated, and effective way, through local government and nonprofit programs.
Health care states the next President will have to choose some variant of the following specific options:
- increasing consumers’ share of health costs through high-deductible insurance, as an alternative to expanding employment-based coverage
- incremental change to strengthen and extend employment-based health coverage, through reinsurance or making federal insurance programs (Medicare, Medicaid, or the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program) more widely available
- universal health insurance by means of “Medicare-for-all”
- support for state-level reforms-which may be the most politically feasible of these alternatives
The education report focuses on higher education. It notes the next President should mount a determined effort, in concert with states and local school districts, to boost the academic performance of low achievers by:
- make college education more attainable for low-income students by simplifying the grants process and reducing inefficiency in the distribution of financial aid
- encourage universities that receive federal dollars to fashion responsible ways to measure student progress and track college costs
- create federally funded fellowships in biology, chemistry, and physics that require recipients, after graduation, to teach high school for one to four years
- create a signature program of federally funded fellowships not only to support students who study critical foreign languages, but also to build much-needed capacity within the Departments of State, Education, and Defense
Sustainable development focuses on the Great Lakes region, advocating that the competitiveness agenda of the next President should include an investment strategy that focuses on regional assets and institutions that steer the transition to the knowledge economy. Specifically, the next President should focus investment to:
- tap the Great Lakes region’s unrivaled educational infrastructure to produce the talent needed to compete in the 21st century, by fostering a “Great Lakes Compact on In-State Tuition” and a “Passport to Higher Education”
- expand the public-private research and development infrastructure in the region to cultivate the technologies of the future
- promote sustainable development within the “North Coast”
- strengthen economic integration with Canada, creating a new mechanism for bi-national coordination and cooperation on transportation and other issues
- enlist the region’s labor, business, civic, and political leadership to remake the nation’s social compact-and thus spur competitiveness-through a regional health care consortium and a portable defined-contribution pension plan
The state of the military report asks whether we have been “Playing Russian Roulette With the Military?” It concludes:
That we have asked so few to do so much for so long, without offering them much help or more troops to share the burden, reflects badly on us as a nation and puts our security at risk.
To deal with this crisis the Institution will sponsor on June 29 an examination of the state of the military today. Participants will include:
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and director of Opportunity 08; Brookings Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative, Peter Singer; Brookings Senior Fellow and former Bush Administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman; and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Dan Christman.
I will post the results of this discussion when they become available.
If your appetite has been aroused by some of the above recommendations I suggest you pay a visit to the above links and read the complete reports along with the accompanying data. I, for one, have Opportunity 08 as a bookmark and have added it to the resources list on this site. It is efforts like this that hopefully will help to make this campaign one that truly is about the issues.
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