Date: 2025-03-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026492 | |||||||||
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EDUCATION
A PRESENTATION AT BROOKINGS IN WASHINGTON Brookings Institution: Finding common ground for working families 
Original article: Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | |||||||||
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Facebook: / brookings Twitter: / brookingsinst Instagram: / brookingsinst LinkedIn: / the-brookings-institution Transcript 0:10 hello welcome to all of those of you who Brave the weather to come join us today 0:16 and also to our online audience we really appreciate you joining us my name is Tara Watson I direct the center for 0:22 Economic Security and opportunity here at Brookings and I'm here because about a year ago Abby McClosky who you'll hear 0:29 from in a moment asked me to join a project it was under the opes of the convergence 0:34 collaborative which I didn't know much about um but the goal was to discuss policies to support Working Families and 0:42 I quickly learned that this approach was really serious about bringing together 0:47 people from across the ideological spectrum and about facilitating 0:52 productive conversation so several do dozen of us spent um quite a bit of time over the 0:58 past year producing report which you'll hear a bit about today especially in the first panel um but then because the 1:06 process was so unusual I wanted to give people the opportunity to hear more about uh work 1:13 across the ideological Spectrum more generally and so our second panel will be focusing on productive ways to do 1:20 that we'll have two panels we're going to pack a lot in um so we'll only have time for a few questions uh but I hope 1:27 you all will stay for the reception at the end of the event outside and continue the conversation 1:32 there and before I turn things over to Abby who will introduce the report I'm going to introduce all of our 1:40 panelists um starting with the second panel which is called finding common ground on polarizing 1:46 issues uh the panelists will include Stuart Butler who's a senior fellow in economic studies here at Brookings 1:53 before joining Brookings Stuart um spent 35 years at the Heritage Foundation he 1:59 was the director of the center for policy Innovation and vice president of domestic and economic policy studies 2:05 there Maya mcginness will also be on the second panel she is the president of the 2:10 bipartisan committee for a responsible federal budget she oversees the committee's fiscal Institute the fix the 2:16 debt Coalition and fix us which is a project which seeks to better understand and address the root CA causes of our 2:23 nation's divisions and deteriorating politics Lindsay too is senior vice 2:30 president of the bank community engagement and executive director of the American Bankers Association Foundation she previously was a vice 2:37 president of policy and advocacy at United Way worldwide where she expanded United Way's nonpartisan Civic 2:44 engagement and Community empowerment efforts that second panel will be moderated by New York Times Reporter 2:50 Jessica gross who is an opinion writer for the Times covering family education and social issues she joined the times 2:59 as a founding being editor of the parenting section in 2018 and then moved on to the opinion section in 3:05 2021 and she is the author of screaming on the inside the unsustainability of American 3:11 motherhood before we hear from that wonderful group we will have the first panel for areas of common ground for 3:18 working families that will be moderated by Molly Kinder who is a fellow here at Brookings in the Metro Group she 3:25 examines um the future of work and uh load w work um especially for women and 3:32 workers of color she previously was a non-resident senior fellow at new America and the director of research for 3:38 its work workers and Technology initiative and she is also um aun fac 3:43 faculty at Georgetown University Lena Guzman is the chief strategy officer at 3:48 child Trends and director of its Hispanic Institute she is responsible for increasing um child Trends impact 3:55 and leading strategic Business Development um she is principal 4:01 investigator of the national Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families where she oversees a large research 4:06 agenda across family well-being poverty and economic self-sufficiency and other 4:12 issues uh the third person on the panel uh will be Josh mccab he's the director 4:18 of social policy at andanan Center previously an assistant professor of sociology and assistant Dean for social 4:24 sciences at endicot college and he wrote a book in 2018 the fiscalization of social policy how taxpayers trumped 4:31 children in the fight against child poverty and um last but not least I'll 4:36 introduce Abby McClosky who directed the project with convergence on supports for 4:42 Working Families she is the founder and principal of research of mosy policy LLC 4:49 and um previously was program director of Economic Policy the American Enterprise Institute and she is going to 4:57 uh lead us off with a few remarks about the project overall uh before we get into our panels so please join me in 5:04 giving everyone a warm welcome and uh I hope to talk with you more at the 5:24 reception thank you so much Tara and to all of you for being here so 5:30 appreciative in 2017 I was a member of a Brookings working group on paid leave with AI and that experience taught me 5:38 two things one was the power of relationships a lot of us who are in that group are still in touch and doing 5:44 projects together today somewhere part of this effort and the other was the power of a bipartisan group to develop 5:51 something new and not just to reduce to the lowest common denominator and those learnings and 5:56 aspirations from Brookings carried over into this convergence process project and I'm so grateful for that how to 6:02 support families with young kids has been the heart of my professional and personal work I've researched family 6:08 policy for the last 15 years and I have three young children myself they're eight six and 6:14 three and like so many parents and researchers I've long felt that there's something in our culture that rubs up 6:20 against Parenthood that makes it harder than an already hard thing needs to be and in many ways more challenging than 6:26 Generations before us we see evidence of throughout the data and parents declining optimism about the future for 6:33 their kids in the relatively small and shrinking share of the federal budget that goes to children people 6:39 increasingly opting out of family formation sometimes citing costs Rising infant and maternal mortality rates in 6:45 books like family unfriendly and the anxious generation the aim of our convergence 6:51 project was not to rename those challenges or to embark on new research which so many groups including Brookings 6:57 have done well rather it was bring together leaders and family policy across political ideologies to find 7:03 common ground and that's because whether we're talking about build back better or the overturning of roie Wade there are 7:10 radically different political approaches for supporting families and a very large relational political organizational 7:17 Chasm between them this project was about one small bridge building organization named convergence who I was 7:23 so proud to partner with taking a step to bridge the gap on family policy in 7:28 particular so the project was always going to succeed or fail based on who was around the table and we chose 7:34 members for the collaborative first and foremost based on their expertise in the area of Children and Families but the 7:40 second criteria was choosing people who we knew had deep policy and political differences who testify against each 7:46 other so organizations are set up in opposition to each other who appear on opposite opinion pages in our major 7:52 papers and we wanted to include our Think Tank voices but diversify out to also include employers nonprofits 7:59 Physicians and folks from different parts of the country our group of 32 which I would say was on the verge of 8:06 manageable uh met monthly over the course of a year both remotely and in person we had a professional mediation 8:12 team to keep things civil and I often joked that our meetings felt like couples 8:17 therapy and we intentionally waited before jumping into policy which is 8:23 something that's actually very hard for policy people to do um but we started 8:28 instead by building a framework for family flourishing and in the end I think this ends up being one of the most powerful parts of the report because it 8:35 gives a new way of thinking and talking about family well-being across party lines and brings in other dimensions 8:42 such as relational connectedness that can get left out of traditional policy conversations our recommendations came 8:49 from this framework and Government Solutions are certainly part of it we'll talk about them but not all of it we 8:54 also had recommendations for employers and philanthropy and communities and these fell into four main C categories 8:59 which I'll go through briefly and then we'll we'll share more on the panel the first is changing the story 9:06 The N the last National pulse we had on child well-being was in 1991 it was the 9:12 published report of the national Commission on children that had been signed into law by Reagan in '87 and the 9:18 title of this report was beyond rhetoric with the kind of subtext being 9:25 enough talking let's get on to to fix these things and our group kept returning to the importance of language 9:31 and rhetoric in nearly every conversation we had and that's why this leads the report um we put forward new 9:37 narratives in it but also recommended interventions to move the well-being of families forward in our national 9:43 conversation and dialogue so this includes things like launching a public narrative campaign to raise awareness 9:49 about the importance of early childhood a similar effort to this is happening in the UK right now focusing policy makers 9:55 attention on Children and Families through new structures this could be a caucus or committee or reinstating a 10:01 national Commission on children for the 21st century or establishing a cross-partisan fact base for 10:07 understanding family flourishing because we're often looking at different data and polling depending on our own 10:12 political leanings and our organizations the second area of intervention was rethinking cash support 10:18 for families and we write in the report that low to moderate income families with young children should receive more 10:24 effective and easy to ACC access cash support while acknowledging fiscal reality 10:29 and this includes reforms such as increasing intergenerational equity in our budget which is to say reallocating 10:35 a greater share of our existing spending to kids exploring the timing of child 10:41 tax credit payments to direct a relatively larger share to families with younger children as well as directing 10:47 relatively more to lower income families and encouraging state and local experimentation with cash support so one 10:54 of the examples we cite is rx kids which is being piloted in Flint Michigan where 10:59 a a pregnant mom and in the first year of her baby's life will receive $7,500 mostly funded by charitable 11:05 donations so we encourage more experimentation like that the third area 11:11 we looked at was ensuring more highquality care options for children um 11:16 and this area was arguably where we had some of our largest disagreements and yet some of our most deeply held desires 11:24 to break out of what it can be a a pretty reflexive one-sized fits-all solution of either full-time 11:30 center-based care or stay-at-home parenting our collaborative called for a new holistic care agenda for young 11:37 children and so that parents should have access to care choices that align with their needs and values in their child's 11:43 development this includes making workplaces more accommodating for parents increasing fam's access to a 11:50 range of child care options through non-traditional Child Care supports like zoning reforms and structures that 11:56 streamline funding access for parents and providers and and ensuring that the existing state block grant the largest 12:02 of which is ccdbg is funded at a level so that any eligible child under the federal guidelines can receive the 12:08 support that they've been promised the fourth and last was supporting parents with adopted children 12:14 and infants and we were able to reach our strongest language here we said that the status quo around birth and infancy 12:20 is not acceptable most in our group supported a national paid BR Lea plan of at least 12 12:26 weeks and this is the longest duration for Lea put forward by Artisan working group that we were aware of and 12:32 investing in more holistic prenatal and postpartum supports whether that's increasing the access to Tele medicine 12:37 for Medicaid or expanded home visits in communities we'll hear more about these 12:42 and and others in the panel but before I do um they are not here but I want to thank the Packard Foundation who 12:48 invested in this project well before they knew where such a diverse group would end up I want to thank the 12:54 leadership of the convergence team who's in the back who uh tirelessly do this work across all sorts of different 12:59 issues and it was such a privilege to see up close and be part of for Jess gross who sat in on a particularly 13:04 feisty session in November of our group and uh covered the workings of it in the times and to Tara Alina and Josh who 13:11 I've been privileged to get to know and were such valuable parts of this collaborative and lastly to Brookings 13:16 for hosting this event it's such a privilege to be back thank 13:28 you 13:42 Abby thank you so much for that amazing introduction it was wonderful to hear what motivated you to be part of this 13:48 effort and some of your previous work um in Bridging the Divide here at Brookings I'm curious to hear from Josh and from 13:55 Lena what inspired you to join this effort and um what brought you to the 14:01 table Yeah okay um yeah I was actually looking 14:07 at the invitation yesterday just I wanted to make sure that my memory is correct so obviously the invitation you 14:13 know the topic right working working to support Working Families that always is appealing but the invitation really 14:19 stood out in I think three different ways one is that this ideological Spectrum also just diversity from 14:27 perspectives so we had business sector represented we had nonprofits advocacies 14:33 um organizations having so many different perspectives and experiences brought to the table was unusual I often 14:40 get invitations for technical working groups or expert panel groups but it's often a lot of conversation and not a 14:46 lot of action and we don't really know where where does all that great discussions go uh and I see Tara shaking 14:54 her head because I'm pretty sure that's a a familiar experience but what I also stood out was that it was a a clear 15:02 action-oriented um sort of mission that the group came and it came with a year-long commitment so you knew that 15:09 they were serious about getting to um actionable goals and actionable 15:14 recommendations so that really appealed to me as well yeah I mean anytime you get an 15:20 invitation from ABY that's always a good sign that it's it's going to be a good project um but I was really excited to 15:26 get in the room with folks who in in previous life I was an academic I had read about different groups different 15:32 organizations different folks within them uh but to be in the room with them and be able to talk to them in a a 15:39 seminar style format that was off the Record you could ask about anything push 15:44 back add on uh that's not an opportunity you get a lot I think in Washington uh 15:49 so it wasn't one that was going to pass up Abby laid out four main buckets um of 15:55 focus areas and underneath that quite a few different policy areas why do you think it was important that 16:01 this project took all of that together holistically um and what what does that say about the convergence process what 16:08 was important about this sort of totality of issues I'd love to hear from you maybe Abby sure so I've been part of 16:15 working groups I'm sure you all have two where you go in and there's a mission to talk about child care and come out with a policy solution and you know a month 16:22 later you'll have a report and the nature of this was completely different we had the parameters to focus on 16:27 supports for working families with young children but beyond that there wasn't any specific area of focus and I think 16:36 having that broad of a mission for our group all of a sudden makes some of the 16:41 little individual pieces feel less big to some extent and so it leads to having 16:47 a more talking about what government can do and employers and philanthropy also talking Beyond one policy solution um 16:54 and kind of putting yourself more in the perspective of the reality that families space and what would really most benefit 17:02 them yeah I completely agree I think you know the where we landed was absolutely 17:07 not um set in stone from the outset we had a very broad agenda um but I think 17:13 it was implicit in the design that we landed where we did so the idea that we would have just taken tackled one issue 17:20 just given the whyde you know given the composition of the group the different perspectives and sectors uh I think it 17:28 was just unlikely that we would have landed there um and it's a good thing because we know that what families 17:33 families do not function in silos they don't have siloed needs um and so I 17:39 think that where we landed really reflects the fact that families needs are complex and they really do need what 17:45 they need are supports around time money and and Care supports and caregiving yeah I think when when when 17:51 the budget comes out everyone sort of runs to see what their policy area got right and it can sometimes feel 17:59 uh like you're competing with with other policy areas and to put them all together and really Force us to say okay 18:05 what are the strengths here what are the weaknesses here uh if we have to consider these things holistically we 18:11 have to figure out what's really important what are some of the impediments or the obstacles and and where do we have that broad agreement 18:17 because as Lena said it's it's a holistic approach to families uh and getting out of that single policy space 18:25 uh to think that way was really really helpful so I've I've heard several references to how unique this 18:31 convergence process was I'd love to hear a little more reflection about what about this process felt different from 18:37 the way you maybe would normally work individually on these topics and what were some of the hardest or most 18:43 challenging and also most rewarding aspects so I would start um you know I 18:51 think typically what I've seen is that they are we take on one topic so would it be child care eitc so we have lots of 18:59 lots of specialists in the room um and I think what stood out again was the Divergence of perspectives the 19:05 industries that were represented absolutely a key ingredient was that facilitated discussions because 19:12 with you know 30 people very strong opinions um I don't see how that would 19:17 have been able to move forward had we not had this incredible facilitated conversations um and I remember some 19:23 days just saying oh we're never going to agree to anything and then hearing um sort of the key takeaways that our 19:30 facilitators uh would summarize at the end and I'm like oh we did say that we did agree um so I think you know those 19:36 two things were just really critical yeah I think we all go in with our our policy specialty and we're ready 19:43 to just talk about that and I think Abby had her her hands full trying to say no no we're not going to talk about policy 19:49 yet we got to think about first principles what sort of conversation do we want to have what are we talking 19:54 about here before we got into that uh and that was really important to help us 19:59 uh step back from our our usual policy won very very narrow way of thinking um 20:06 and also be able to talk to people off the record with uh just nothing in 20:12 particular so usually you call somebody up hey I have a new report I want to talk to you about my report or I want 20:17 you to take a look at this this thing I'm working on uh and you know that's helpful but it doesn't allow for those 20:24 broader conversations of what are your thoughts on X Y and Z whatever comes up in the conversation it's a bit more 20:30 organic you go places you probably wouldn't expect to go and for me I would say it was the 20:36 intentional slowness that was both I think created the space to have 20:41 conversations we did in creativity and was also frustrating at times um and 20:47 that we we did try our best to be a neutral space again been part of groups 20:52 that are all conservative with a token Progressive or all Progressive with a token conservative and those don't feel 20:59 like really a safe place to actually say why you think what you do and so we we 21:04 really strove to have a very balanced group to have a private place that 21:09 wasn't performative to meet again and again and again share meals um and and 21:15 build relationships and ultimately those are really hard to measure but I think that's that's what's really missing 21:21 right now in some of our political conversations right last question before I open it up to the audience um what 21:27 would be your biggest priority for family policy coming up in the year ahead and I know we're in an election 21:32 year so um is there one particular issue that is top of mind for 21:39 you um I'll start um I you know if I had of the three that we put forth um for me 21:45 it would be Child Care uh I think um just Co really shun a light at just how 21:52 broken our childcare system is and how much um how critical it is we all we 21:58 know it's critical for uh families and working parents uh we know that it can 22:03 do um really help support children's development high quality Child Care um 22:09 and you know it's so linked to family economic well-being if we don't you know if you're on your way to work and 22:15 suddenly your child care center is not oper uh not open um you know some of us 22:20 are have the the luxury of being able to work from home and for many it really means a uh a missing paycheck that 22:28 you're you're not making um so it's also really tied to economic 22:33 well-being yeah I think uh with 2025 coming up in in all the debates around 22:39 the tax package uh we're really thinking about the child tax credit and what that should look like what it could look like 22:45 uh and what are some broader reforms we can integrate to help make that so it's a bit more generous it's helping uh 22:52 families across uh the income Spectrum uh and it's it's not going to break the bank so we want to make sure that this 22:58 is something sustainable for families that they have it uh in good times and in bad and it helps them afford just the 23:05 cost of raising kids and I'm excited about the bipartisan bamal working groups in 23:11 Congress for paid leave and the bipartisan CTC negotiations but what I'd really love to see is a reinstating of 23:19 the national Commission on children for the 21st century uh it's been decades the well-being of Children and Families 23:24 has arguably gotten worse our polarization has to and I think having a 23:29 bipartisan National commission to address it would be a huge step forward 23:35 great um do we have any questions from the audience for our 23:41 panel I think we have a microphone 23:46 coming hi uh Chris McCrae I'm not sure if this is for this panel the next one 23:52 but I was interested did you review the sort of flow of Education as part of 24:00 your process because my daughter grew up in Montgomery County and we went through 24:05 six different schools and each time there was another test or sort nothing 24:11 ever fitted and everywhere she went from one place where she was bullied to the next and 24:17 so the so there's something very wrong with the education system at least for 24:23 girls well and that was something that was so frustrating in some ways about this process because education was an 24:29 area we didn't have scope to get into child poverty was an Area Tech and Teen 24:35 Mental Health and we intentionally focused on young kids um you know up to 24:41 early elementary school because that is such a historic area of underinvestment in the country and education is a bigger 24:47 conversation that would have required different people around the table um to address 24:57 adequately hi great discussion and Josh's my boss so big fan of Josh too um 25:04 uh quick question uh as someone who works around the hill I've been privileged to see firsthand just the 25:10 really strong central left center right coalitions on issues like paid leave and and the child tax credit which owe a lot 25:16 to many of the folks on the in involved in the working group um Child Care space 25:21 I know there's probably room for more maturity there so would love a bit more elaboration on uh kind of sort of the 25:28 creative transpartisan preliminary ideas you had to recreate that sort of Coalition building in a new 25:38 area I guess I can answer um I'm happy to take him yeah so I think the the 25:44 cloud was actually really helpful and in some of the relationships we built there I've I've SE since reached out to folks 25:49 and have written some some policy ideas and and run some some different panels 25:55 based on those conversations that we had so it really brought in my thinking um and opened those doors where we can have 26:03 some of those broader conversations about uh you know care choices pluralism what a different folks need what's 26:10 plausible possible uh so I think the collaborative was was really helpful particularly in that 26:15 space yeah and in some ways even the language around that section not being called the child care section but 26:20 creating more care options for families I don't think I'd fully appreciated before going into this process how even 26:27 that type of language can be pretty off-putting to some folks in the more conservative side of the spectrum so 26:34 again talking about it as a broader um issue of care was something that we did 26:40 in the group was another hand 26:46 yes hi uh Craig Obie from the convergence Leadership Council um 26:51 question for you because this this wonderful work that's been done challenge is always when it gets into 26:58 the the policy process there are the political pressures that folks who were having private conversations in those 27:04 rooms are going to confront I'm just curious how you see the ability of folks 27:10 the inclination of folks who were involved to help carry this forward in that 27:17 process well I mean I think that we've continued to be several of us continue to be in touch uh Josh just mentioned a 27:25 couple of ways um and I also think that um I think the message of what the 27:31 convergence model has done I think is also when um when I've either done media 27:36 interviews or talked at places that's what really what what is it about this what's the secret sauce that seems to 27:43 really have um helped break through um because we need more of that um in such 27:49 a polarized um environment that we lead 27:55 Le yeah and and I mean I'm encouraged we are seeing some of those bipartisan efforts happening in Congress in real 28:01 time um they don't always rise to the level of you know the Trump Biden rematch but they're happening there's a 28:08 large group of people who want to see change in this space and so continuing to advance conversation at the federal 28:14 level but then there's a tremendous amount happening at the state and local level um too in this regard whether it's 28:19 blue States or red States or purple States and also among employers who are members of our group and what can you 28:26 know Amazon and Walmart and the Chamber were all part of our table kind of what are the steps that the private sector 28:32 can also take in helping support fam so it crossed a a number of different dimensions but I think kind of the the 28:39 actual ground that it's hitting is is pretty fertile for reform right 28:45 now Maya thanks hi I'm Maya mcginness on the 28:52 next panel um and I apologize because I feel like my question is not in the spirit of convergence which is a group 28:58 that I participated in and the process is amazing um and it's about what you can come together around but I also 29:04 think it's useful to know where are the kind of Parts you could get stuck on an issue that aren't constructive are so 29:11 were there any proposals that everyone thought was a terrible idea that get lots of attention or that were 29:16 particularly divisive that like one side loved and the other side didn't like so more as a warning these are not the 29:23 things that bring people together around this issue well we can't possibly end here Maya so you sorry I there should be 29:28 one more up question I do think the child care space was particularly contentious I think that no surprised 29:36 anyone here who follows the child tax credit negotiations and the implications on work were contentious I I think one 29:44 of the surprising pieces that we ended up leaving out of the report um was not 29:49 including the economic implications of some of our familyfriendly reforms for supporting 29:55 women's work um or gender equity that that actually got left out of the final 30:01 report with intention because it became an area that the group couldn't agree on um and had a lot of discussions about if 30:08 the end goal of family support is it for economic stability is it for the adults is it for the kids um and ultimately the 30:15 the facts in the report the proposals are child focused um for the most part so that was another area that was 30:22 contentious and I think we also you know very quickly also there there are some groups of children that we did leave off 30:28 the table so for example the fact that this is a report about working families and policies aimed at supporting work 30:34 and families um so we left out children who whose families you know are not able 30:40 to be stably employed we we did leave that out and you know that includes uh a 30:45 substantial number of children who are in deepest you know have some of the highest needs um so those were some 30:52 things that I still I read the report and I know those moments and I agree with why we went there but it's still um 31:00 you know not something that I I particularly love 31:06 so I have a question in the 31:18 back uh wend Primus with u Brookings I just wanted to follow up on the 31:24 discussion I've had one foot in the health world and one foot in my family in the education world and I'm shocked 31:31 by the salary difference between a nurse and a teacher and that goes through Head 31:37 Start Child Care Etc and you mentioned it can you say anything more about what 31:42 needs to be done to the salary levels and the final question is did you say anything about child welfare policies 31:49 and and the amount of abuse of our children which is primarily nect and and 31:56 uh addiction yeah yeah and on the latter a hugely important issue and again one of those 32:03 where the scoping of this project didn't allow us to get into the Foster system 32:09 and abused and neglected kids and maybe we can do another version of it uh where we can um again the so another area of 32:18 debate following up to Myas was the child care Workforce and that kept coming up too and is notably there's 32:25 references to it in the report but it's not a focus um and I guess that would be my answer 32:31 to the question about salary disparities between a healthcare worker and a childcare worker or between just a at 32:37 this point a retail or fast food worker and a childcare worker we we went into the recommendations for supporting 32:44 families from the family from the parent child perspective and less from kind of 32:50 exogenous in if that makes sense from the workforce so that was something that we didn't address in our 32:56 report I don't know if you all have things to add to that oh and I would also add that um you're absolutely right the issue 33:03 around wages um for the EC work for the Early Childhood childcare Workforce is a 33:09 big one uh it's also very closely tied with issues around Equity um gender 33:14 Equity but also racial Equity so a large portion of our Workforce in the childcare space is our black and brown 33:21 women um who are just you know historically been underpaid um but this 33:26 is a also a place where a lot of states are innovating um and I was going to bring Molly in uh I know that you're our 33:33 moderator but I know that there are many states that are really uh leading the charge here in addressing this and um 33:40 and seeing this as as as as an necessary condition to really um uh expand and 33:47 build um the child care market right I have a um a project here at Brookings um 33:53 looking at issues around the care Workforce and I think what is interesting with this conversation is I 33:59 think there's an argument to be made and I know you couldn't do everything in one report so in one one year this is a 34:05 bigger project but there is an argument to be made that some of the benefits of raising pay for the childcare Workforce 34:11 really is for the families as well it's an equity issue because this is a it's a vastly underpaid Workforce it's 34:17 disproportionately black and brown and women but also from the perspective of families looking for child care there's 34:22 huge Child Care shortages and it's very difficult for these um Child Care Centers to attract a Workforce when as 34:29 Abby you were referencing it often pays more to go across the street to a Home Depot or CVS um than to have you know 34:36 what we pay our childcare Workforce so it's an interesting one for me that whether or not that was sort of in the 34:41 scope and if it wasn't for lots of reasons I'm curious if there's any um 34:46 sense from the conversations you had as a group of partisan differences on this front um and um as uh we just heard 34:55 there is a lot of really interesting things happening at the state local level including in Virginia with the Republican Governor there's been some um 35:02 child care worker wages um but some of it is a little bit more partisan some of these wage increases um including for 35:08 long-term care is coming more from Democrats but especially on Child Care it seems to be more bipartisan so I 35:14 didn't know if any of the conversations in your group reflected any commonality did you find had this been in the remit 35:21 would that maybe have been an area of potential um collaboration and um 35:28 opportunity yeah it's all excellent points I do think that was an area that ran into so in child care in our group 35:36 there's a divide between which point taken that they flow freely in between the quality of the childcare Workforce 35:42 impacts families understood but one level down I felt like we we hit a more fundamental debate 35:49 about why are other people paid to watch kids and not parents and there was a lot 35:56 of tension between kind of stay-at-home parenting and formal Child Care um and 36:01 we couldn't square that Circle particularly well which is why we ended up with creating more options more 36:07 options to stay home more options to work part-time more comedy of workplaces more care options both in a center and 36:13 with a faith-based organization or you know family and friends but we were kind 36:18 of down at that route of the problem and sadly didn't really weren't able to 36:26 address the childcare Workforce issue specifically we have a 36:37 question well this conversation is timely because today Mariel Bowser released her budget where she zeroed out 36:45 augmented pay for child care workers anyone want to offer an 36:53 opinion go for it um sorry I'm taking a um uh a moderator prerogative to say I'm 36:59 deeply disappointed by the announcement today in fact it was at a Brookings event that was held just a few months 37:05 ago that I attended that b sill our colleague hosted around paid leave and other um Early Childhood interventions 37:12 and we lifted up the the example of Washington DC as as exemplary um there's 37:17 an incredible program here if you're not familiar it's called the pay Equity Fund and basically DC has made a commitment 37:24 to put child care providers on par with um School teachers in terms of pay based 37:29 on education so if you have a bachelor's degree and you work in early childhood you get the same um as you would as if 37:35 you were a teacher and it sort of scaled down based on educational attainment so it means for a trial care provider up to 37:42 about a 12 or $133,000 a year bonus and it's really important in a city like DC 37:47 which I I have three young children I've benefited from our free prek-3 and prek4 that it left quite a disparity that we 37:54 had an early childhood um school-based um uh Workforce that was well-compensated 38:00 and just terribly low paid child care providers who were many times on public assistance I mean it's just criminal in 38:06 my view how low paid the childcare Workforce is given they are looking after our our future human capital and 38:12 our loved ones um I was been very proud to be a DC resident knowing this program existed I've talked about it to many 38:18 other states and cities and lifted it up as one of the best examples in recent 38:23 years of a a state or a city really investing in a childcare work force I think it would be a mistake for DC to do 38:30 this and I think it's very disappointing in fact what I'm hoping to see is more cities and states um doing interventions 38:36 like this as opposed to taking away I think what is a um a model uh example I 38:42 mean I've talked to folks in New York City about it and other places as a model to replicate um so I would say 38:48 this is deeply disappointing news I hope it's not the end of the story and I appreciate your 38:53 question and and maybe to wrap it on that and on your question there's so much that we disagree about um so many 39:01 issues that we didn't cover or weren't able to reach whether it's education or healthare and yet there are 25 pages and 39:08 accumulative 1,000 hours of places where there is Broad agreement that could move forward and I do think that can get lost 39:15 International conversation and I would love to see the pieces where there's agreement move forward um with 39:23 urgency do we have time for one more question yes okay great take 39:31 I mean just in reference to Muriel bow I mean one of the main problems with it is that is the growing economic inequality 39:37 that exists in this city other words there's no proposals to say that people that make the most money should pay more 39:43 in taxes so that we can have the available resources to provide better 39:48 paid job slots for uh early childhood development and things like this and 39:54 that's I I was wondering whether or not that type of issue of growing economic 39:59 inequality was tried to be dealt with in any of your discussions and before I pass on I just 40:05 want to make the point that the The Early Childhood uh pay for teachers is actually funded by a tax on the 40:11 wealthiest DC citizens so it's actually quite an interesting example but this question of economic inequality or even 40:17 how we pay for some of these programs was that a topic certainly the latter piece of it 40:23 and how we pay for these programs and in this case a recog recogntion that we spend so much of our relative resources 40:31 at the later stages of life and so relatively little at the beginning and 40:38 that you know I suppose part of me is still a conservative to say we're in a 40:43 relatively unprecedented fiscal situation raising taxes alone isn't going to do it and so our report talked 40:50 about reallocating spending and and where to do that um from so I think that's an important piece of it and 40:56 certainly the broader economic conditions impact impact families and all of these 41:02 issues I think our report was getting to a level deeper than that though and it was saying the economics matter but also the relationships also the feeling that 41:08 families can raise kids according to their values feeling of resilience when there's when they're setbacks and it's 41:15 it was part of the tension in our group all of a sudden it became kind of everything or nothing like in the beginning we were trying to scope and what gets included because everything 41:21 kind of impacts it to some extent and what are we exactly trying to do because there's any number of different kind of 41:27 North Stars we could choose for supporting families not all of which kind of lat us together in a 41:33 comprehensive way um so all that is a long-winded way to 41:39 say that income inequality is not explicitly addressed in the report um 41:45 and there's there's lots of reasons for that but we're also intentionally trying to broaden out just beyond economics too 41:52 and talk about the broader picture of what it's like to be a young kid in America today and that has other factors 41:57 in there also yeah um final question we're 42:04 heading into an election season there's going to be a lot of issues discussed what about this experience gives you 42:10 some hope for what's ahead for family policy is there anything that you're taking away that gives you some optimism 42:15 either about a specific proposal or even just this approach that makes you 42:22 hopeful I'm going to start with the pragmatic part so we the US has joined 42:27 the below replacement fertility club that many countries in Europe and Asia 42:32 uh already have been part of um and so I do think that it's we are going to have 42:39 the incentives to support families with young children are going to be even more 42:47 Paramount because we we're going to be a shrinking Society we're not going to have a Workforce to support Social Security old 42:55 age um so I do think that um in the coming soon hopefully um we should be 43:03 seeing uh greater attention to uh how we can support Working Families because of 43:10 our shrinking um population size yeah I think I'm I'm optimistic 43:15 knowing that you know we had some some strange bed fellows in this group and no one knew what we were doing until the 43:20 report came out and and all our names came out um in my organization we talk a lot about secret Congress that there's 43:27 similar process these happening in Congress folks are working together I think we'll all be working with them to 43:33 come up with with viable proposals that we don't even know what they look like yet until they come out and folks jump 43:39 on board hopefully and I was going to say the presidency clearly matters for so many 43:46 reasons I've worked on presidential campaigns but in a country as closely 43:52 divided as we are a policy that's going to be able to have Broad based support 43:58 from Washington DC to Texas where I live now is probably going to come from 44:03 Congress out as opposed to from the administration because it Congress is always a more represents just number of 44:12 people a broader set of Interest than a single Administration can and because there are these existing and growing 44:17 momentum around bipartisan efforts for cash support for paid leave coming out of Congress that in some ways I've 44:23 turned the dial on the presidential race way down and have my focus on Congress 44:29 on the 2025 tax package that Josh referenced and on these bipartisan groups which are gaining momentum so 44:35 that's what's keeping me helpful great well thank you so much to our panel that was an excellent discussion appreciate 44:56 it 45:15 that was such a great discussion and uh such a great round of questions and um I'm so excited to have our part of it 45:22 because when I sat in on that multi-hour discussion I didn't know what 45:27 to expect and considering school board meetings regularly involve police breaking them up um I was I was nervous 45:36 that it would uh be contentious in a way that was unproductive and so I was so 45:41 just impressed with the moderation with the care and respect that everybody treated each other with um and the 45:49 participants willingness to engage in just such a good faith back and forth and so steart and Lindsay e if either 45:55 one of you want to start with um your involvement with convergence and just the experience working uh in such a 46:03 discussion I I'll jump right in just because I have my mic ready um well first I just want to say thank you to 46:09 Brookings for hosting this conversation and for convergence for their leadership I was just in awe of the last 46:17 panel because I think it's so refreshing today to have a conversation about reaching common ground and so I think 46:23 that that this conversation is needed now more than ever um with convergence I am really proud to serve as a board 46:29 member and that Journey started um I'm doing the math because it 46:35 started when I was pregnant with my son so he's now six years old that started about six years ago um when I was asked 46:42 to join a dialogue on uh the broken budget process and that was uh similar 46:49 to the last panel another sort of eye-opening experience of getting deep 46:55 into the Weeds on how do we come to consensus on addressing the fact that 47:00 we're constantly um moving from government shutdown to government shutdown which is 47:05 still very much the case um but through that experience we were able to come up with some really strong um policy 47:12 Solutions and so uh through that process I um was really impressed by what 47:20 convergence was about and it really spoke to at my core who I am is really 47:25 about trying to find that um common ground and uh joined as a 47:30 board member and have been part of this work ever since thank you um I've also been a 47:37 board member for many many years of uh at convergence and like Maya and and 47:43 Lindsay have been involved in in projects I've been involved actually with a number of projects um chiefly in 47:50 the area of the budget process which Meer and Lindsay were both involved in uh but also mainly in the healthcare 47:56 area and economic reability and one right now on social determinance of 48:01 Health um and just to sort of pick a few of the techniques I think that's probably in many ways what I can 48:08 indicate having seen a lot of these different projects um and and there certain techniques I think which are 48:13 very very important in in why these uh projects are so important and come to success one is actually the use of 48:21 professional mediators and facilitators for these projects as in the one with 48:26 talking about today um and the importance of that is to have somebody in the room who's constantly as a 48:33 professional sort of watching the conversation watching the body language 48:38 uh taking a moment in the in the uh coffee break to just ask a question of 48:43 one person and so on to read the room in other words so I think when Abby described this as couples counseling I 48:50 think this is very very much the case of of a professional looking at people who 48:55 are arguing with each other and getting to the bottom of why how they can find agreement and that that's a very 49:02 important feature you see this in in almost all the convergence projects I think secondly that it's the 49:10 conversations often begin and certainly this is an important element of trying to get at what are the underlying values 49:18 Vision life experiences of people actually in the room because even if 49:24 somebody's got a you know a PhD or is a specialist in a certain 49:30 areas they are still motivated by things that have happened to them and way ways they see the world one of the techniques 49:35 we often use in a not all the projects but a lot of them is actually to go around the room and say why are you 49:43 personally interested in this issue and you hear the stories uh I've seen actores for life 49:51 insurance companies tearing up talking about uh long-term care and what 49:57 happened to their parents that shatters the The Impressions that other people 50:03 have about what this person must be like you know uh because people come into a room and they tend to pigeon pigeon hole 50:09 people oh well you're from the banks we know what you people do right and and and so on and these stories change theam 50:16 Dynamics fundamentally I think the third thing I'll say and then I'll stop is is uh again what Abby 50:23 mentioned the projects do not just take a few days this is a year-long process 50:30 this is not like uh the kind of bargaining where you say we're all going to stay through the night here and reach 50:36 agreement we're going to lock the men's room and the women's room and you're going to have to just come to agreement it's not like that it it builds 50:43 agreement over time uh using the techniques I mentioned and others uh and that's a critical uh 50:51 aspect of this and we can talk more about some of these techniques but but that taking the the time is really 50:58 important to get to agreement you cannot push it too fast and sometimes you don't get to agreement um my I'd love to hear 51:05 from you about your experience working across the aisle and I do I mean hearing Stuart talk I I do think one of the sort 51:11 of Special Sauce of this is that it is off the Record um I think especially 51:17 with social media people can be quite wary of something that they are saying getting repeated getting spun in a 51:23 certain way and so I wondered if you thought that sort of affected the way that people might work together in in a 51:29 more on the record fashion okay great thank you is this 51:35 on that's a button thanks um first I will also is it still on can you hear 51:44 me it's a it's a thank you thank you um first I will also sing 51:50 the Praises of convergence because having done the process uh I actually wish I could live my life with one of 51:55 those media ERS following me everywhere it was it like brings out your best behavior I feel like we should all in 52:02 every conversation we have pretend one of those mediators is watching us feel like in a soon to be surveillance State 52:08 maybe that's where we'll be in a couple years that's maybe not a great thing but with the with the convergence folks it's 52:13 um it really helps you to think about how you're interacting and having discussions which I think is one of the great parts of the secret sauce if 52:21 convergence ever asks you to be part of the process say yes you come away much better for it uh and I'm also just going 52:26 to give a plug which is we need more foundations to fund them because no matter what policy you care about having 52:33 the infrastructure that helps us get to where the yeses are is really really important and like Abby said nothing's 52:39 going to work unless there's there's going to be no durability in policies unless it has a broad support so I just 52:44 think the work is so important your question is about doing this um in the real world and so I do this in in 52:52 Congress these days I'm trying to build support for fiscal policy it's pretty easy the left and the right don't support fiscal responsibility and so um 53:01 there's there's that that they agree on um but your question I was just thinking about this about off the Record is it 53:07 easier it's so much easier so one of my co-chairs is Leon Panetta and he has overseen lots of negotiations and he 53:14 always says like nothing is agreed to till everything is agreed to you can come up with certain policy agreements 53:19 but you have to see the rest of them um but the problem is I don't think off the record exists anymore and I'm thinking 53:25 about the Capitol Hill group that I'm working with right now they trust each other pretty much and a huge piece of 53:33 this is building trust building relationship spending lots of time together really getting to know each 53:40 other on a personal level I think one of the most important things in building this kind of trust is um 53:47 empathy understanding human connection that only comes from time and frankly 53:52 some level of vulnerability one of the best processes I've ever seen for this was in a different group I was working 53:57 with where we went around the table at dinner and said what is like the worst thing that's happened to you on social 54:02 media and the stories were horrible people had had you know death threats and their kids being threaten just awful 54:08 stories but people really opened up in a way that a very diverse group had huge 54:14 hu like I am loyal to some of those people forever just from that one dinner so finding ways that you can build 54:20 connection empathy really matter but that's also important to trust that nothing you say is going to get leaked 54:27 but the bottom line is I think the idea of off the Record is over I think it doesn't exist anymore and it's sort of 54:34 like everybody says you know when you're saying off the Record just think about something that that it it you do you 54:40 wouldn't want it on the front page of the paper but you still have to understand it could well be on the front page of the paper so I think there's a 54:45 huge loss in that um I feel somewhat connected to 54:50 that loss because I spent a lot of time working on campaign Finance reform stuff for a long time and always thought that 54:56 absolute transparency in everything was the solution to a lot of stuff in policymaking and for me it was one of 55:02 those examples of something you push really hard for turns out not to always bring with it all the benefits that you 55:07 want their unintended consequences um but I do think the 55:13 solution isn't to believe that you have privacy and nothing will get leaked it's going to be more of how you build enough 55:19 connections to understand that the reasons you think other people are saying things or believe things might 55:24 not be their reasons and more about listening and asking questions where we're going to find the ability to do this so I'm very interested in that 55:31 asking questions because that seemed to be such a big part of the process it was sort of taking a moment and not 55:38 just fighting back with your idea it was saying okay let me pause and ask a 55:44 follow-up question so um in addition to sort of what the kids call trauma bonding which both of you said is a way 55:50 to break down vulnerability um how do we what are other ways to foster that 55:55 connection ction and compromise among people who you know either have preconceived notions of each other or 56:01 just have that desire to to disagree is that for anybody it's for 56:08 anybody I mean Stuart you seem to Jumping well I was just going to give you an example and then we might develop 56:13 on it one of the earliest projects we did at convergence now 10 12 years ago 56:18 was actually on K through 12 education we had people in the room from two major 56:23 um uh unions we had schoolers uh we had uh charter school advocates and so forth 56:31 uh we had one terrible meeting where everybody just yelled at each other because they all focused on exactly what 56:37 was going on right now the issues before Congress and so on so we went away and we just sort of regrouped and we came 56:43 back and said let's not talk about any of that let's talk about um your vision of what an education system should look 56:51 like 20 years from now let's not even talk about today and one of the 56:57 remarkable things that happened is that we discovered that uh people's vision of 57:02 the future wasn't as different as they thought it was um and uh we were able to 57:09 kind of begin to sort of build by looking at the future the you know what if sort of scenario and then start to 57:14 kind of walk back to today and do it in that sequence as opposed to let's get 57:19 into what the issues are today and see if we can make agreement so there are techniques like that that that can get 57:25 people really off uh their what they think of of a of a their position and 57:32 begin at least to entertain uh an alternative view because you're not asking what they're going to vote for today or advocate for today 57:40 you're asking about the future uh and that's a technique we've used quite often in in convergence projects to um 57:48 change the dynamic and get it out of the day-to-day um so that's one area I think 57:54 one way one technique of deal with what you asked about yeah I just add on to that and I 58:00 think the the thing that comes to mind to me is is leaning into the discomfort and I think that we're all 58:08 used to being in places in spaces where we are comfortable right we we want to be 58:15 places where we are with likeminded um individuals and and we're 58:21 not often in spaces where we have to be confronted Ed with difference and so I 58:29 think what is really valuable about this process is that it puts it right in your face you have to confront it and you 58:37 have to recognize that your assumptions and your biases about that difference 58:43 might be not what you were expecting so I think it's it's leaning into the discomfort it's overcoming your biases 58:49 and your assumptions and as Maya mentioned that comes from connecting as a human being finding what are those 58:56 areas where you have in common so you can get Beyond those those um 59:02 assumptions because we all have them and I know we've all seen the Ted talk about our brains being Machines of inference 59:09 right we make decisions every day based on assumptions and biases but when we 59:17 put those things aside that's where the magic happens that's where we can really dig into what the solutions look 59:24 like uh okay have two thoughts about one that helps with what works and one about 59:29 what doesn't work um and so one of the things that so we have this small sub project of the committee for responsible 59:36 federal budget called fix us and it's looking at the the root causes division dysfunction distrust the argument for 59:43 why we're involved in it is it's impossible to make progress on fiscal responsibility when you're so polarized that no one wants to do anything 59:49 difficult and right now my colleague who runs this Mike Murphy has just he's in the midst or is just completing a 59:54 project Coleman project which is after Peter Coleman who's written a wonderful book and article on this topic but where 1:00:00 basically people pick a partner from a different point of view and spend a lot of time sort of a couple exercises 1:00:07 getting to know each other and just working on it over and over and when I've done different things like that one 1:00:12 of the best pieces of advice that I've received and that really works is when you're talking about somebody where you 1:00:18 disagree and you feel that feeling of kind of outrage boiling up and I think outrage is the word that describes so 1:00:24 much of the the Al part component of polarization that we're feeling these days you like feel it in your chest it's 1:00:31 tightening or wherever you feel it you stop and you ask another question and 1:00:36 that's the only thing you let yourself do when you're feeling more angry and more argumentative and it is a technique 1:00:42 that I have found is brilliant it does also work with couples um and it is it's 1:00:48 a really valuable thing if you can you kind of need the other person to be doing it too but um just by doing it 1:00:54 actually creates help for them to do it there's also um an example of what not to do I was hosting a dinner and I had a 1:01:02 meeting with 40 members of Congress which is an incredible turnout bipartisan 20 and 20 um and this is 1:01:09 really a unique chance when you're trying to get people to work on something and I decided the topic of 1:01:14 this meeting was going to be all the things that you believe and tell yourself that are wrong and so I said 1:01:21 okay Republicans you tell yourself that tax cuts pay for themselves no they don't okay Democrats you tell yourselves 1:01:29 that you can print money or you don't need to worry about fixing entitlements whatever the thing was I picked like 1:01:35 some of the core fiscal myths that many of them hold on to this was not greeted with warmth and connection this was not 1:01:42 like oh okay we're wrong and you are right it was the most hostile blown 1:01:48 event I have ever run and obviously it was going to be because it's just a terrible way to confront anything there 1:01:55 there is no wrong or right well that's not true I'm going to take that back there's a lot of wrong or right nobody 1:02:02 comes to what they're doing believing they're doing it for a wrong reason so if it really seems like what they're 1:02:07 saying what they're thinking what they're believing makes no sense back to asking questions but trying to 1:02:12 understand what the story they've told themselves to get there really helps um and this was sometimes for my team at 1:02:19 work I share the stories of my top 10 worst moments and there's many many of them but this was really just one of the 1:02:25 biggest waste opportunities because I thought I would take my space to explain why someone else was wrong and I don't 1:02:30 think that can ever work so one of I I sat in on this meeting right before Thanksgiving and I just kept listening 1:02:37 to the moderators and thinking at many Thanksgiving tables would benefit from this man um but Lindsay I I was curious 1:02:44 um you know I think if you did have a moderator at Thanksgiving many family members would just be like kick rocks 1:02:51 like you can't treat me like this it's not this it's a very when people agree to be in the convergence dialogue it's 1:02:57 very specific they know what they're getting into how do you bring these lessons into your personal life in a way 1:03:03 that people want to receive it because I remember sort of listening to it and thinking there were so many useful 1:03:08 things but it is much harder to do in a sort of casual interpersonal space so 1:03:14 I'm very curious about what works what have that's a loaded one wow you really dropped the bomb on me there um I'm gon 1:03:20 take notes yeah I don't I don't have a silver bullet here for you but I think it's for me it's as simple as um and 1:03:30 going back to what we've talked about is is is is putting your 1:03:37 own um it's listening a bottom line that 1:03:42 really is it period it's deeply listening and not I think many of us 1:03:49 especially at the Thanksgiving table are looking for our chance to speak right we're waiting for the person to um w WRA 1:03:55 it up so we can make our important point But at the bottom the bottom line is is 1:04:02 to look for opportunities to listen and to truly genuinely hear the person out 1:04:08 and what what what they're saying and also what is what is what is underneath 1:04:13 what they're saying right there's there's there's what are the core values underneath what they're saying that you 1:04:19 can connect with um and that really I think is the most important thing for 1:04:25 all of us I think that's what we need to challenge all of us to do is how do we deeply listen in new ways and this very 1:04:33 much connects to my day-to-day work I work with banks and I encourage I equip 1:04:40 I Empower them to deeply listen to their communities in new ways they may have 1:04:45 assumptions about what the community wants um they may have had conversation 1:04:50 with communities years ago but if you don't have that regular in intentional 1:04:56 engagement and conversation and listening and you don't practice that on a regular basis there are deep gaps that 1:05:03 sometimes develop and so um I think whether it's at the listening at the at the dinner table or whether it's um in 1:05:10 the conversations um in Congress uh We've gotta um we've go to we've got to 1:05:16 listen more if I could just pick up very quickly on that um uh that is so important this issue of of listening but 1:05:23 it's all uh in addition it's very important whether be the Thanksgiving table or a a convergence project to try 1:05:29 to listen and find out what's really behind where that what that person is saying and again it's often due to 1:05:36 either either something very important some value that they have or something that's happened to them uh we were all 1:05:43 involved in the budget process U uh project and without mentioning any names 1:05:48 uh I'll just say at one point um we had a discussion and it and the person a 1:05:54 proposal was on the table and and one person just kept finding every kind of if all you like nitpicking problem with 1:06:02 this and I remember doing a a a coffee Bak going out and saying why are you 1:06:08 really against this right and the answer was fairly straightforward it was that 1:06:13 look I've spent all my life fighting to um ensure that low-income people have 1:06:19 adequate health care and what's being proposed here will undermine years of my 1:06:25 work I believe that could happen well with that information we were able to go back and start to think about how can we 1:06:32 address that specifically but he had never said this in the meeting itself right does it sound like 1:06:38 Thanksgiving and or you know what husband wife relationships and so on uh 1:06:43 so I think that's really very important and and that's one of the things that that good leaders and facilitators are 1:06:49 very skilled at doing as sort of I spotting situations where what they're 1:06:54 saying is not really the reason uh and it can be very very important in terms of drawing um 1:07:01 conclusions and also avoiding U you know explosions by just well I think it's time for a break you know just at the 1:07:08 right strategic time to stop things going south right or to say let's avoid a break when things are moving right to 1:07:14 get something done so don't don't under upset the momentum uh so you know as as 1:07:20 the previous panel also mentioned we are in an election year and so um you know 1:07:25 Maya I'm wondering it is there a way we can encourage productive 1:07:31 dialogue as you know either as the media as in our lives sort of any sort of 1:07:38 public way that we can actually Foster productive dialogue um as we have these 1:07:44 political conversations and they will become increasingly fraught I think as the year goes 1:07:49 on oh um such a complicated answer from how I see it so because the stakes of 1:07:57 this election and the past couple elections have felt higher to most of us than stakes in previous elections 1:08:03 there's a different Dynamic going on and that well first let me just say it is a very very strange thing to be a 1:08:09 political independent in this town um you feel completely ideologically homeless and it is a town of two teams 1:08:16 and even when people are saying like I want to do something that's bipartisan a lot of people because our organization 1:08:21 is bipartisan will come and say how do you do something that's B btis here's what I want the outcome to be and 1:08:28 so I need you know someone from the other side to sign on um and so that doesn't and there's 1:08:33 nothing wrong with not being bipartisan you don't have to be but you sort of can't pretend to be bipartisan by picking one of the few known Republicans 1:08:40 Or democrats you can stick on your commission and call it such um but this is 1:08:46 a I hope I can do what I'm trying to say justice this feels like a different moment to me where suddenly a lot of 1:08:52 people believe the outcome of this election not just the presidency but the majority of the house Andor the Senate 1:08:59 is so important that it's not just the ends that matter you you are willing to 1:09:06 sacrifice the means of how you get there it because the ends matter so much so do 1:09:11 that make sense like normally there are many policies where there is lots of overlap there are many 1:09:18 issues where we can say sort of the political system is against this or we can focus on the 80% of overlap and that 1:09:25 where we should focus and and do those things but I think so many people right now feel that the outcome of the 1:09:31 election matters to the point where they don't want to give the other side whichever side it is a single win and so 1:09:37 it's a really hard time to do what I think we normally need to do which is focus on focus on the zone of possible 1:09:43 agreement instead of disagreement um when I think about it specifically from 1:09:49 my issue because what I look at is a campaign where we have two candidates who are going to promise uh lots of 1:09:54 things they will give us not a whole ton of ways to pay for them with some exceptions where Biden talks about a lot of tax increases and I guess Trump talks 1:10:02 about tariffs um and a lot of promises of the things that they won't do so I'm 1:10:07 trying to think about how do you come out of this without a mandate to avoid the issue of our national debt at 1:10:14 all and I think one of the things for the media is to try to figure out how you brief the media not to fall into 1:10:20 just one side's perspective to understand the perspective so when they're asking questions they're they're more pointed towards understanding both 1:10:28 not to go for the um headline Grabber the more contentious 1:10:34 thing so if somebody says you're willing to raise the retirement age for younger workers in most circles that's a policy 1:10:39 where most people say yeah we should consider that that's there's there's a lot of zone of agreement there but now if somebody says I would contemplate 1:10:45 raising the retirement age reporters jump in because they know there's a lot of political risk in that one so trying 1:10:52 to figure out how the media doesn't play into this already tricky situation is one of the things um but basically my 1:10:59 concern is normally people be like well let's focus on kids is something we 1:11:05 should all care about there's a ton of solutions there but right now the unwillingness to do anything that will 1:11:10 help make the other side look good because the stakes Feel So High um creates a huge stumbling block to your 1:11:17 question um I think it's a good time to open up uh to the audience so I would love anybody has 1:11:24 questions 1:11:30 thank you uh I'm Tom dun with the convergence Leadership Council um the panel agrees 1:11:39 that there's no Silver Bullet and how to practice this in our daily lives I would certainly agree the closest thing to a 1:11:46 silver bullet that I've discovered recently Rob F actually recommended it is a book by Bill Yuri one of our great 1:11:54 supporters it's just came out called possibility powerful and it explains how 1:12:00 convergence does work without talking about convergence 1:12:07 yeah other question there's 1:12:15 someone my name is Dan coffing with a I'm sorry tech technology product called objectively. a but my question first by 1:12:21 way of mathematical explanation in the information age the amount of information outside my skull just is 1:12:28 vastly surpassing and accelerating beyond proportionally what is inside my skull in convergence terms that might be 1:12:35 called intellectual humility where it gets at in this sort of polarized world 1:12:40 is do we see any new models emerging where I as an opin a person with an 1:12:46 opinion sort of diminishes have sort of a smaller stake have more perspective 1:12:52 that oh the the collective of knowledge exists outside me versus inside me I 1:12:57 should P pound the table that much less does that make sense as sort of the mathematical View and what that might 1:13:03 imply for how we conduct ourselves in any of our justicul or you know sort of 1:13:10 dogmatism things like that uh I'm not sure I completely 1:13:15 understand the question but I would say that we certainly see these days an increasing difficulty of trying to um 1:13:23 understand or or identify what is the settled opinion on something you know in science in particular uh but other areas 1:13:30 as well uh and I think that's just going to get worse I don't see any if I if I may like the percent the the likelihood 1:13:37 that any one person is going to be wrong proportionally is getting worse and worse I think that's so yes and so that 1:13:43 means like when I'm really getting dogmatic about something then I I should be that much more circumspect and does 1:13:50 that create a different psychology in your negotiation uh I I think the 1:13:55 and also I just think that one of the things and and uh um you know you just 1:14:00 referred to it uh uh was that you know we're seeing we're becoming almost more and more frightened by other people's 1:14:07 opinions you certainly see that if you look at the data on sort of what Republicans think of Democrats and vice 1:14:13 versa or Trump supporters and non-trump supporters they're more and more fearful uh I think that's a big concern 1:14:21 uh and then and I I'll throw this back to you uh Jessica because I think the Press clearly the the media has a very 1:14:28 important role in this which is not a big surprise but I think one of the things I would suggest that the media and the New York Times do less off is 1:14:34 use the word falsely uh so and so falsely said X for 1:14:39 two reasons one is sometimes it's not necessarily false but secondly it just irritates people right if I'm told oh 1:14:47 well that's just false your opinion is false uh it's an it causes anger so the attempt to try to get the reader to to 1:14:55 to navigate facts actually in my view sort of actually um um does not do that 1:15:01 it tends to just upset even more those people who oppose well I will say I mean 1:15:06 we have a very high bar for for using those types of words I've seen many disagreements in The Newsroom among 1:15:12 about this um but I will say one thing that actually gives me hope I've done a lot of reporting on jenzy and their 1:15:18 political beliefs and they are actually moving away from extremely aggressive 1:15:24 ively stated political beliefs um I the polling reflects this I've talked to 1:15:30 many of them um it's sort of a turnoff to have too aggressive a political 1:15:35 belief because I think they're exhausted uh they've just had so much uh ranker um 1:15:41 most of them came of the political age starting in 2016 they were not conscious for any sort of political dialogue 1:15:47 before then and so I am you know even though they are sort of marinating in this just Endless Sea of opinion um I do 1:15:54 actually have some hope that there the result is not just further and further and further polarization it is them 1:16:01 saying I don't like any of this so uh that gives me at least a little bit of 1:16:06 Hope in all of this um that's that's a really encouraging news that is 1:16:11 excellent news um in the convergent fashion I would like to disagree with Stuart but agreeably I really think it's important 1:16:19 that the media is able to say false yeah when there's a high standard I think we're living in a world right now again 1:16:24 all right not you it's not you feeling censored sorry um I think in a world 1:16:32 where there's a lot of things that aren't true that are said if you can if you are as certain as one can be I think 1:16:37 it's very helpful when people make claims of fact that aren't um I wanted to address this question not sure what 1:16:43 you meant but I'm going to address how I heard it which was one I actually think there's always been much more correct or 1:16:50 information outside of our brains than within our brains even before the information age we just are more aware 1:16:55 of it with the information age so I think that's been a truism that's always existed two I think maybe you put your 1:17:00 hand on part or your finger on part of why it is so upsetting as we start to see ourselves as a smaller role both in 1:17:07 the universe or maybe not the most evolved of as technology becomes smarter 1:17:12 than us in many many ways that we see on a daily basis that's very threatening so maybe people try to hold on to their 1:17:18 beliefs even stronger and I think thinking a lot about how the shifts in technology are shifting our psychology 1:17:23 and so far in a that seems to be harming our mental health and harming our abilities to get along and thinking 1:17:30 about how we change that could be an incredibly productive direction to think about Ai and other Technologies Big Data 1:17:37 other things but finally I also think when it comes to public policy it gives 1:17:42 us an incredible ability to use crowdsourcing in a way that we haven't where there are so many parts of policy 1:17:48 that people can have opinions on but there's no way for them to register um referendums isn't necessarily the right 1:17:54 way to to do it where you have decisions made but there's a way to engage many more voices in discussions of different 1:18:00 issues because of new ways of implementing technology in the policy space and I think there's a lot of promise 1:18:06 there can I can I just add I I do think just going back to I know media always 1:18:12 gets a bad rap and and there certainly is a role to play in in lowering the temperature right but so much of it is 1:18:20 driven by going back to the Thanksgiving T dinner table it's driven by us and I 1:18:25 was really fascinated by some research that I saw about why the country and our 1:18:30 politics are so polarized it's because we're polarized and so uh the Congress being 1:18:37 polarized is a reflection of what our communities look like the articles that 1:18:43 are in media are a reflection of what people want to read and so ultimately it 1:18:49 does go back to the conversations that are happening in our households and in 1:18:54 our communities and um certainly convergence has a process for us to address some of 1:19:02 these intractable policy issues but we as human beings have a role to play in 1:19:07 that as well can I disagree again just because it's so fun to disagree on panels um because we always tend to 1:19:14 agree so much but I actually don't think that's true I think that the political environment and I've I've looked at this 1:19:20 for a paper I've been trying to write for eight years and it hasn't worked so take this for a grain of salt but I've looked at like all the theories of 1:19:26 polarization and tried to read them to do kind of a polarization for dummies little paper um but a lot one of the big 1:19:34 things that contributes clearly is the way that primaries are set up and because primaries appeal to the extremes of both parties so the people who are 1:19:40 elected who aren't in Swing Swing districts tend to be much more extreme than many of the people in the 1:19:47 population and the second thing is that even though we may not feel extreme we are drawn to extreme headlines clickbait 1:19:54 work on the rest the best of us right I try desperately not to Qui click on 1:19:59 quick clickbait excuse me but it pulls you in sooner or later it will find the thing that like will get you there and 1:20:06 so you can actually create more of a sense of um extremism by understanding that that's how our brains respond and 1:20:12 then creating ecosystems where we're not hearing the Nuance that we used to have access to so I'm not sure that it's 1:20:18 really reflecting this polarized us as much as new forms of technology in our 1:20:23 political system are pushing Us in that direction and I think it's probably a both and to some extent right like there's there's probably some there's 1:20:32 a the sense the sensationalism right in media is something that people are drawn 1:20:37 to but there's a reason why we're drawn to it and then it perpetuates those sort 1:20:43 of headlines so I think I I don't know that we fully disag we in disagreement 1:20:48 here I think it's I think both of these these two things are feeding into each other that's creating the 1:20:53 self-perpetuating um cycle ofation I think we all agree it's Jessica's fault right yeah yeah 1:21:00 it's all my fault um I think do we have time for one more is it even though we're over okay we have one more uh you 1:21:07 choose I can't [Laughter] be hi I wanted to pick up on your gen z 1:21:13 uh Point were there some young people included in your process the other thing 1:21:19 is during covid one thing that did happen was that a lot of us were able to 1:21:25 sort of zoom into top people's things you know Bloomberg's meetings World economic forum and I thought there was a 1:21:31 promise that once we got out of covid we're trying act you know more common 1:21:36 sensibly or at least a lot of the younger generation thought that promise 1:21:42 was made so I was just wondering if did we learn anything from covid or are we learning anything from what the younger 1:21:49 generation want and did that come into your panel 1:21:55 two really good questions I don't know if I know the answer to either of those um I'll just say that I know that there 1:22:02 are organizations and one of them also sered there's a gentleman who serves on the board with Stuart and I who leads an 1:22:09 organization that goes to college campuses and has these facilitates sort of a convergence process on college 1:22:16 campuses so those sorts of conversations are happening um but I know in our in our uh session 1:22:25 particular was it was mainly people working in these organizations so we didn't have a younger perspective on 1:22:31 that um and then what was your second part of the question well did we learn anything from 1:22:38 Co in terms of promising that we would you know do more common senseful things 1:22:44 once we got back together again um I I wrote a longer piece which Abby spoke to 1:22:49 me for um earlier this year uh as a fouryear anniversary of of covid start 1:22:55 um and I think there has been change actual Market che young people included in your process the other thing 1:21:19 is during covid one thing that did happen was that a lot of us were able to 1:21:25 sort of zoom into top people's things you know Bloomberg's meetings World economic forum and I thought there was a 1:21:31 promise that once we got out of covid we're trying act you know more common 1:21:36 sensibly or at least a lot of the younger generation thought that promise 1:21:42 was made so I was just wondering if did we learn anything from covid or are we learning anything from what the younger 1:21:49 generation want and did that come into your panel 1:21:55 two really good questions I don't know if I know the answer to either of those um I'll just say that I know that there 1:22:02 are organizations and one of them also sered there's a gentleman who serves on the board with Stuart and I who leads an 1:22:09 organization that goes to college campuses and has these facilitates sort of a convergence process on college 1:22:16 campuses so those sorts of conversations are happening um but I know in our in our uh session 1:22:25 particular was it was mainly people working in these organizations so we didn't have a younger perspective on 1:22:31 that um and then what was your second part of the question well did we learn anything from 1:22:38 Co in terms of promising that we would you know do more common senseful things 1:22:44 once we got back together again um I I wrote a longer piece which Abby spoke to 1:22:49 me for um earlier this year uh as a fouryear anniversary of of covid start 1:22:55 um and I think there has been change actual Market change I mean the 1:23:01 legislative processes you and DC know better than anyone is slow it is very 1:23:06 very slow but I have been covering these issues for 15 years and I've never seen so much movement and so much actual 1:23:14 actual progress being made um and is it I I mean I think you know Li there there 1:23:21 are some people who expect us to be Sweden overnight and we're never going to be Sweden ever in any context but I 1:23:30 think that discounts a lot of the of the incremental change that has happened 1:23:35 particularly at the state and local level um and even with the setback in DC today you know there's so many examples 1:23:42 of movement forward sort of in paid leave in child care so specifically on the child care front I can't speak to sort of other convergence um but there 1:23:49 absolutely has been movement forward for families but it is slow are we we're we're done well thank 1:23:56 you so much for to Brookings and to everyone for coming and and to Abby for 1:24:01 getting everybody together so thank 1:24:23 you 1:24:43 EX | |||||||||