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POLICY OPTIONS SUPPORT FOR WORKING FAMILIES From the the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at Brookings A presentation on April 3rd 2024 in Washington DC PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DKkCOHMjYU Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I am writing this note after attending a live discussion hosted at Brookings in Washington DC about 'education'. The 'theme' of the presentation seemed to be: EDUCATION ... THE COST OF EDUCATION ... THE ISSUE OF COSTS AND RESULTS ... WHY SO BAD? But the situation surrounding education and equality and accomplishment and understanding and and and is a lot more problematic than this. Essentially, many of the powerful people who run the world and their financial and technical enablers are pulling a lot of key levers that gives them more wealth and more power and ... seemingly ... they do not seem to 'give a damn'. I have done socio-enviro-economic analysis in some form or another for most of my adult life ... and now, at 84 years old, I have never been so annoyed as I am now. The potential for a better world than we have ever had in all of history exists at the technical level, but the way the rich and powerful and politically connected make decisions is more what one would expect from neanderthals rather than 21st centory humans. A few people have been well educated. I see 'well educated' as being educated to the fullest of an individual's potential. This is not the goal of most educationm and certainly not the practice. Some places ... countries, states, cities ... do education better than others ... but most places are doing education worse now than they were a generation ago. Worse ... modern technology is making it far easier for good education from educators and schools to be offset hy all sorts of other sources of information much of which has malign intent. My impression is that a lot of proposed 'solutions' are anything but! Book learning has its place, but 'experiential learning' is also valuable. I went through a very good formal education as a child and early adulthood ... but much of what I know today has come from experiential learning. I argue that my experiential learning has been essential to my ongoing understanding of our modern socio-enviro-economic system, but would not have been possible without the foundation I was given at the beginning with my formal ... and quite simplistic ... education! Peter Burgess
hello welcome to all of those of you who Brave the weather to come join us today and also to our online audience we really appreciate you joining us my name is Tara Watson I direct the center for Economic Security and opportunity here at Brookings and I'm here because about a year ago Abby McClosky who you'll hear from in a moment asked me to join a project it was under the opes of the convergence collaborative which I didn't know much about um but the goal was to discuss policies to support Working Families and I quickly learned that this approach was really serious about bringing together people from across the ideological spectrum and about facilitating productive conversation so several do dozen of us spent um quite a bit of time over the past year producing report which you'll hear a bit about today especially in the first panel um but then because the process was so unusual I wanted to give people the opportunity to hear more about uh work across the ideological Spectrum more generally and so our second panel will be focusing on productive ways to do 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 you all will stay for the reception at the end of the event outside and continue the conversation there and before I turn things over to Abby who will introduce the report I'm going to introduce all of our panelists um starting with the second panel which is called finding common ground on polarizing issues uh the panelists will include Stuart Butler who's a senior fellow in economic studies here at Brookings before joining Brookings Stuart um spent 35 years at the Heritage Foundation he was the director of the center for policy Innovation and vice president of domestic and economic policy studies there Maya mcginness will also be on the second panel she is the president of the bipartisan committee for a responsible federal budget she oversees the committee's fiscal Institute the fix the debt Coalition and fix us which is a project which seeks to better understand and address the root CA causes of our nation's divisions and deteriorating politics Lindsay too is senior vice president of the bank community engagement and executive director of the American Bankers Association Foundation she previously was a vice president of policy and advocacy at United Way worldwide where she expanded United Way's nonpartisan Civic engagement and Community empowerment efforts that second panel will be moderated by New York Times Reporter Jessica gross who is an opinion writer for the Times covering family education and social issues she joined the times as a founding being editor of the parenting section in 2018 and then moved on to the opinion section in 2021 and she is the author of screaming on the inside the unsustainability of American motherhood before we hear from that wonderful group we will have the first panel for areas of common ground for working families that will be moderated by Molly Kinder who is a fellow here at Brookings in the Metro Group she examines um the future of work and uh load w work um especially for women and workers of color she previously was a non-resident senior fellow at new America and the director of research for its work workers and Technology initiative and she is also um aun fac faculty at Georgetown University Lena Guzman is the chief strategy officer at child Trends and director of its Hispanic Institute she is responsible for increasing um child Trends impact and leading strategic Business Development um she is principal investigator of the national Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families where she oversees a large research agenda across family well-being poverty and economic self-sufficiency and other issues uh the third person on the panel uh will be Josh mccab he's the director of social policy at andanan Center previously an assistant professor of sociology and assistant Dean for social sciences at endicot college and he wrote a book in 2018 the fiscalization of social policy how taxpayers trumped children in the fight against child poverty and um last but not least I'll introduce Abby McClosky who directed the project with convergence on supports for Working Families she is the founder and principal of research of mosy policy LLC and um previously was program director of Economic Policy the American Enterprise Institute and she is going to uh lead us off with a few remarks about the project overall uh before we get into our panels so please join me in giving everyone a warm welcome and uh I hope to talk with you more at the reception thank you so much Tara and to all of you for being here so appreciative in 2017 I was a member of a Brookings working group on paid leave with AI and that experience taught me two things one was the power of relationships a lot of us who are in that group are still in touch and doing projects together today somewhere part of this effort and the other was the power of a bipartisan group to develop something new and not just to reduce to the lowest common denominator and those learnings and aspirations from Brookings carried over into this convergence process project and I'm so grateful for that how to support families with young kids has been the heart of my professional and personal work I've researched family policy for the last 15 years and I have three young children myself they're eight six and three and like so many parents and researchers I've long felt that there's something in our culture that rubs up 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 here I think it's I think both of these these two things are feeding into each other that's creating the self-perpetuating um cycle ofation I think we all agree it's Jessica's fault right yeah yeah 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 choose I can't [Laughter] be hi I wanted to pick up on your gen z uh Point were there some young people included in your process the other thing is during covid one thing that did happen was that a lot of us were able to sort of zoom into top people's things you know Bloomberg's meetings World economic forum and I thought there was a promise that once we got out of covid we're trying act you know more common sensibly or at least a lot of the younger generation thought that promise was made so I was just wondering if did we learn anything from covid or are we learning anything from what the younger generation want and did that come into your panel 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 are organizations and one of them also sered there's a gentleman who serves on the board with Stuart and I who leads an organization that goes to college campuses and has these facilitates sort of a convergence process on college campuses so those sorts of conversations are happening um but I know in our in our uh session particular was it was mainly people working in these organizations so we didn't have a younger perspective on that um and then what was your second part of the question well did we learn anything from Co in terms of promising that we would you know do more common senseful things once we got back together again um I I wrote a longer piece which Abby spoke to me for um earlier this year uh as a fouryear anniversary of of covid start um and I think there has been change actual Market change I mean the legislative processes you and DC know better than anyone is slow it is very very slow but I have been covering these issues for 15 years and I've never seen so much movement and so much actual actual progress being made um and is it I I mean I think you know Li there there are some people who expect us to be Sweden overnight and we're never going to be Sweden ever in any context but I think that discounts a lot of the of the incremental change that has happened particularly at the state and local level um and even with the setback in DC today you know there's so many examples 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 absolutely has been movement forward for families but it is slow are we we're we're done well thank you so much for to Brookings and to everyone for coming and and to Abby for getting everybody together so thank you EX

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