America’s Next 50 Days Will Be Our Worst or Best in Decades

Democrats' promises to undo Trump's havoc and meet Americans' long-thwarted aspirations will die on contact with progressives' and Republicans' obstruction, Congress' culture of gratuitous conflict, Trump's vetoes, plus inevitable crises over AI, the debt, and China, Russia, or Iran testing our unstable leadership.

To avert this dystopian future, my former colleagues and I crafted a Political-Economic Grand Bargain for improving the quality of life for Americans left, right, center, young, old, coastal and heartland - enough for all to see that plan as their roadmap to a brighter future.

Indeed, in YouGov polls earlier this year, 83% of Republicans and Independents, 87% of Democrats, and 77-92% of voters in every age bracket, income level, and ethnic group said: "I want Congress to make this Grand Bargain a priority."

To obtain such wide support for a comprehensive policy agenda, my team and I distilled hundreds of good ideas down to the most impactful, cost-effective reforms for defusing seven existential threats:

1. Ever-rising concentration of wealth
2. K-12 education & adult skills sinking to 31st in the world
3. Worst health outcomes at highest costs among developed countries
4. Debt heading toward fiscal meltdown
5. Chaotic energy policy all stakeholders condemn
6. Incomprehensible tax code benefitting just a few
7. Congress dividing instead of uniting us

Here is how the Grand Bargain would undo all the above: https://www.gbanusa.org/39

Plain common sense, according to the 21 members of Congress from both parties I have spoken with in recent months. All agreed that their constituents would overwhelmingly support the 39 reforms, which were clearly the most practical ways to rein in the debt, improve K-12 education, lower health care costs, and so on

Yet every incumbent refused to say so publicly, on the grounds that Congress as a whole would never go along.

Unwilling to accept that brush-off, I spent most of the summer in the six congressional office buildings, speaking with over 30 congressional interns and almost 100 staffers, including 10 chiefs of staff and schedulers, typically the most powerful position in each lawmaker's office.

Five of the latter vowed to get me meetings with their bosses. None did.

I must sadly report that nearly everyone who works on Capitol Hill for more than four months surrenders their heart and mind to worshipping their title, the pointless meetings they must attend to maintain status with their peers, and the archaic rituals that govern those meetings.

Amidst that nonsense, no one on the Hill other than young interns seems to care about advancing their constituents' long-term interests. Short-term stuff, yes. But nothing past the next election.

What may save us is that after winning a massive election victory, Democrats' will soon face an existential crisis they have no tools to extricate themselves from, other than the Grand Bargain.

As things stand, Democrats' current policy agenda, next to the 39 GB reforms, looks like the usual political BS, and will blow up in their faces as progressives' and Republicans' throw up roadblocks that cannot get through Congress' culture of gratuitous conflict. Democrats will have to change course.

So, I am taking hockey great Wayne Gretzky's advice to go where the puck is going to be.

In recent days, I have told junior staffers for Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries that their bosses are headed for a congressional deadlock they have no idea how to get out of, and therefore need to publicly support reforms that 83% of voters left, right, and center will welcome.

The junior staffers are trying to get their bosses to listen. So far, crickets. But each day the staffers' and my frustration push us to do better. Here's our latest pitch:

The public's trust in Democrats will vaporize the instant they discover the Grand Bargain. Even worse, if you hesitate to support it, you are inviting Donald Trump to keep stirring chaos that increases the risk of a debt crisis, AI apocalypse, or geopolitical havoc.

So, I urge any Democrat who wants to lead to publicly vow that you will move forward on the 39 Grand Bargain reforms as soon as you have the gavel in the House or majority leadership in the Senate.

83% of voters will then want Democrats to lead. Those voters could, in theory, come down on the heads of every centrist Republican in both chambers to go independent and elect Democratic leaders now.

If Democrats fail to take this initiative, my team will broadcast the Grand Bargain to the world to reveal the new majority to be as feckless as their predecessors. Our goal: to shock the Dems out of their post-election smugness into recognizing that they desperately need to offer the public a brighter future that only the Grand Bargain can create.

Sol Erdman is founder and CEO of Grand Bargain Action Network, a public interest nonprofit. Sol also founded and, for three decades, led the Center for Collaborative Democracy.