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consider how the 2024 election will impact american families. it is hosted by the brookings institution. >> hello. welcome to all of those of you who braved the weather to join us today, and also to our online audience. we appreciate you joining us. my name is tara watson, i direct the center for economic opportunities at here -- right here at brookings. a year ago, someone asked me to

join a project. it was under the convergence collaborative, which i did not know much about. the goal was to discuss policies to support working families. i quickly learned this approach was really serious about bringing together people from across the ideological spectrum and about facilitating productive conversation. so several dozen of us spent quite a bit of time for the past -- over the past year producing a report. which you will hear a little bit about today, especially in the first panel. then because the process was so unusual, i wanted to give people the opportunity to hear more about work across the spectrum more generally.

so our second panel will be focusing on productive ways to do that. we have two panels. we'll only have time for a few questions but i hope you all will stay for the reception at the end of the event outside and continue the conversation there. before i turn things over to abby. i'm going to introduce all of our fannists, starting with the second panel, which is called finding common ground on bowl rising issues. stewart butler, a senior fellow in economic studies here at brookings. before joining brooking, he spent 25 years at the heritage foundation, vice president of economic and policy studies. maia mcginnis will also be on the second panel. she is the president of the bipartisan committee for a bipartisan freshman bunt. she oversees the fix the debt coalition and fix u.s., which seeks to better understand the root causes of our nation's divisions and deteriorating politics.

lindsay torrico is senior vice president of the bank community and engagement and executive president of american banker foundation. she previously was the vice president at united way world widerd. -- worldwide. where she expanded their world community efforts. that will be moderated by jessica grose, an opinion writer for the times covering family education and social issues. she joined the times is a founding 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'll have the first panel, for areas of common ground for working families, which will be moderated by molly, a fellow here in the brooksings group. she examines the future of work and low-wage work, especially

for women and people of color. she is also adjunct faculty at georgetown university. lina guzman is chief strategy officer and director of hispanic institute. she is responsible for increasing caltrans impact and leading strategic business development. 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. the third person on the panel will be josh mccabe, the director of social policy at the emmis canon center. previously assistant professor of sociology, and he wrote a book in 2018, the fiscalization

of social policy. and last but not least, i'll introduce abby, who directed the project with convergence on supports for working families. she is the founder and principal of research of mccluskey policy l.l.c. and was previously director of american policy at the institute. she's going to lead us off with a few remarks about the project overall before we get into our panels. please join me in giving them a warm welcome and i hope to talk with you more at the reception. [applause] >> 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 aei. that experience taught me a few things. one was the power of relationships. a lot of us are still in touch and some are part of this effort. the other was the power of a bipartisan group to develop something new and not just to reduce it to the lowest common denominator. those warnings and aspirations from brookings carried over into that 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 have researched family policy for the last 15 years and i have three young children myself. 8, 6, and 3. like so many parents and researchers, i have long felt there is something in our culture that rubs up against parenthood. that makes it harder than an already hard thing needs to be and more challenging than generations before us. we see evidence of this throughout the data.

parents declining optimism about the future for their kids and the relatively small and shrinking share of the federal budget that goes to children, people opting out of family formations, sometimes exciting cost, rising infant and maternity mortality rates. the aim of our convergence project was not to rename those challenges or to embark on new research. which so many groups including brookings have done well. rather it was to bring together leaders and family policy across political ideologieses to find common ground. whether we are talking about build back better or the overturning of roe v. wade, there are radically different political approaches for supporting families. and a very large relational, political, organizational chasm between them. this project was about one bridge -- taking a step to bridge the gap on family policy in particular.

the project was always going to succeed or fail a stone who was around the table. we chose numbers from the collaborative first and foremost based on their expertise in the area of children and families . but the second criteria was choosing people who we knew had deep political differences, who testify against each other, whose organizations are set up an opposition to each other, who appear on opposite opinion pages and our major papers. we wanted to include our think tank voices but diversify-out to include employers, nonprofits, physicians and folks from different parents of the country. our group of 32, on verge of manageable, met monthly over the course of the year. we had a professional mediation team to keep things civil. i often joked our meetings felt like couples therapy. and we intentionally waited before jumping in to policy, which is hard for policy people to do. but we started by building a framework for family flourishing

and i think this ended up being one of the most powerful parts of the report. it gives a new way of thinking and talking about family well-being across party lines and brings in in other dimensions, such as relational connectedness. our recommendations came from this framework and government solutions are part of it. we'll talk about them but not all of it. we also had recommendations if -- for employers and communities and philanthropies. and these fall into four mainly sections. the first is changing the story. the last national pulse we had on child well-being was in 1991. it was a rope -- it was a published report on the national commission on children. it was signed into law by reagan in 1987. in the title of this report was "beyond rhetoric." with the subtext being enough talking, let's get on to fix these things.

and our group kept returning to the importance of language and rhetoric in nearly every conversation we had. we put forward new narratives but also recommended interventions to move families forward in our national conversation and dialogue. this includes things like launching a public narrative campaign to raise the awareness of the importance about early childhood. a similar effort to this is happening in the u.k. focusing policymakers attention on policies and families. this could be a family caucus or committee oren stating a national policy on children for the 21st century. we're often looking at different data and polling depending on our own political leanings and organizations. the second area of intervention was reorganizing cash support for families. low to moderate income families with young children should receive more effective and easy to access cash support, while

acknowledging fiscal realities this includes reforms such as increasing intergenerational equity in our budget, reallocating a greater share of our existing spending tickets. exploring the timing of child tax credit payments to direct a larger share to families with more children and as well to more for income families. -- from low income families. one of the examples we cite is our ex kids, being piloted in flint, michigan, where a pregnant mom and in the first year of her baby's life will receive 7500 dollars funded by charitable donations. we encourage more experimentation like that. the third area was ensuring my -- more high quality care options for children. this area was arguably where we had our largest disagreements. and yet some of the most deeply held desires to break out of what can be a one-size-fits-all

solution of full-time center-based care or stay-at-home parenting. our collaborative called for a new holistic agenda for new -- for young children. so that parents have access to care choices that align with their needs and values in their child's development this includes making workplaces more accommodating for parents. increasing access to a range of childcare options through nontraditional childcare supports and structures that streamline funding access for parents and providers. ensuring the existing state blocker grant is funded at a level that any eligible child under the federal guidelines can receive the support they have been promised. and the fourth and last was supporting parents with adopted children. we were able to reach our strongest language here. we said the status quo around birth and infancy is not acceptable. most in our group supported a national pay -- paid parental leave of at least 12 weeks.

and investing in more holistic prenatal and postpartum supports, whether that's increasing access to telemedicine for medicaid or expanded home visits in communities. we will hear more about these and others on the panel. before i do, they are not here, but i want to thank the packer foundation who invested in this project well before they knew where such a diverse group would end up. i want to thank the leadership of the convergence team, in the back. they tirelessly do this work across all sorts of different issues. it was such a privilege to see up close and be part of. for jeff gross who sat in on a particularly fiery session and -- in november and covered the workings of it. and to tara, lena, and josh who i have gotten to know so well. and lastly to brookings for hosting this event. it's such a privilege to be back. thank you. [applause]

>> abby, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. it was wonderful to hear what motivated you to be part of this effort and some of your previous work in bridging the divide here at brookings. i'm curious to hear from josh and lena what inspired you to join this effort. and what brought you to the -- [no audio] >> yeah, i was looking at the invitation yesterday. i wanted to make sure that my memory is correct. obviously the invitation had the topic working people and working families. but the invitation stoodout in different ways. one is the idea of a spectrum and also perspective. so we have different sectors represented.

we had nonprofits, advocacy's, organizations. having so many different perspectives brought to the table, which was unusual. i often get invitations for technical groups or panel groups but it's often a lot of conversation and not a lot of action. and we don't really know where all the great discussions go. i see tara shaking her head. i'm pretty sure that's a familiar experience. what also stood out is that it was clear action oriented mission the group came. it came with a year-long commitment. you knew that they were serious about getting to actionable goals and actionable echo mendacious. so that really appealed to me as well. >> yeah, anytime you get an invitation from abby, that's always a good sign that it will be a good project. i was really excited to get in the room with folks who in a

previous life, i had read about different groups and organizations. but to be in the room with them and be able to talk to them in a seminar style format that was off the record. you could ask about anything, push back, add on, that's not an opportunity you get a lot, i think you get a lot in washington. so it wasn't one i was going to pass up. >> abby laid out four main buckets of focus areas and underneath that, quite a few different policy areas. why do you think it was important that this project took all of that together holistically and what does that say about the process? abby? >> i've been part of working groups where you go in and there's a mission to talk about childcare and come out with a policy solution. and a month later you'll have a report. the nature of this was entirely different. we had the parameters to focus

and support for working families with young children. beyond that, there wasn't a specific area of focus. i think having that brought advice of our group made all the pieces feel less big and leads to more about what government can do and philanthropy but also talking about one policy solution and putting yourself more in the perspective of what -- of the reality of what families face and what would most benefit them. >> i completely agree. i think that where we landed was not set in stone from the outset. we had a very broad agenda. i think it was implicit in the design that we landed where we did. the idea that we would have just taken and tackled one issue, given the wide -- [no audio]

unlikely that we would have left it there. families do not function in silos. i think where we landed reflects the fact that families need our supports around time, money, and a shared supports. >> what's their policy area about, right? it can sometimes feel like you're competing with other policy areas. to put them altogether and force them to say, ok, what are the strengths and weaknesses here? if we do it holistically, we have to figure out what's really important. and we have that broad agreement and address it to families. to think that way was really helpful. >> i have heard several

references to how unique this convergence process was. i would like to hear more reflection about what about this process felt different from the way you would normally work individually on these topics and what were some of the hardest, most challenging but also most rewarding aspects? >> i think typically what i've seen is we take on one topic. whether it be health care, the i.t.c. so we have lots and lots of specialists in the room and i think what stood out again was the divergence of perspective, the industries that were represented. a key ingredient was the facilitated discussion. 30 people, very strong opinions. i don't see how that would have been able to move forward had we not had these incredible facilitated conversations. i remember some days saying, we will never agree to anything. then hearing the key takeaways

that our facilitators would summarize at the end, i would be like, we did say that, we did agree. those things were really critical. >> i think we all go in with our policy speciality and we're ready to just talk about that and i think abby had her hands full saying no, no, we're going to talk about what kind of conversation we're going to have before we got into that. that was important to step back from our usual policy, very narrow way of thinking. and also be able to talk to people off the record with nothing in particular. so usually you call somebody up -- hey, i have a new report. i want to talk to you about it or i want you to look at this, this thing i'm working on. that's helpful but it doesn't allow for those broader conversations on what are your thoughts on x, y, and z, whatever comes up from the conversation. it's more organic.

you go places you probably would not expect to go. >> for me, i would say it was the intentional slowness that both created the space to have conversations we did and creativity, and was also frustrating at times. and that we did try our best to be a neutral space. again, i've been part of groups that are all conservative with a token progressive or all progressive with a token conservative. and those don't feel like really a safe place to say what you think you do. we strove to have a very balanced group. to have a private place, to meet again and again and again, share meals, and build relationships. ultimately those are hard to measure but i think that's what's really missing right now in some of our political conversations. >> last question before i open it up to the audience. what would be your biggest priority for family policy coming up in the year ahead?

i know we're in an election year so is there one particular issue that is top of mind for you? >> i'll start. of the three that we put forth, for me it would be childcare. i think covid really shone a light on just how broken our childcare system is and how critical it is. we know it's critical for families and working parents. we know that it can really help support children's development, high-quality child care and it's so linked to economic well-being. if you're on your way to work and suddenly your child care center is not open. some of us have the luxury of being able to work from home and for many, it really means a missing paycheck that you're not making. so it's ultimately tied to

economic well-being. >> yeah, i think with 2025 coming up and all the detectives -- debates around the tax package, we are really thinking about the child tax credit and what that should look like, what it could look like and what are broader integrations to help make it a bit more spectrum and -- a bit more generous, helping families across the income spectrum. and it will not break the bank. we want to make sure this is sustainable for families, that they have it in good times and bad. and helps them move forward the cost of raising kids. >> i'm excited about the bipartisan, bicameral working groups in congress for paid leave. but what i'd really like to see is reinstating of the national commission of children for the 21st century. it's been decades. the well being of children and families has arguably gotten worse. our polarization has too and i think having a bipartisan

national commission to address it would be a huge step forward. >> great. do we have any questions from the audience for our panel? i think we have a microphone coming. >> hi, chris mccurdy. i'm not sure if this is this panel or the next one but i'm interested, did you review the sort of flow of education as part of your process? because my daughter grew up in montgomery county and we went through six different schools and each time there was another test of sorts. nothing ever fitted and everywhere she went, from one place where she was bullied to the next. so there's something very wrong with the education system, at least for girls. >> that was something that was so frustrating in some ways about this process. because education was an area we

didn't have scope to get into. child poverty was an area. tech and teen mental health. we intentionally focused on young kids up through early elementary school because that is an historic area of underinvestment in the country and education is a different -- a bigger conversation that would have required different people around the table to address that adequately. >> hi, great discussion and josh is my boss. i'm a big fan of josh too. quick question, as somebody who works around the hill. i have been privileged to see firsthand the really strong centerleft, central right coalitions around paid leave in the child tax credit, which meant a lot to many of the folks involved in the working group. child care space, i know there's probably room for more maturity there. so i'd love a bit more elaboration about the bipartisan preliminary ideas you have to

re-create that coalition building in a new area. >> i guess i can answer. >> i'm happy to take it too. >> i think the collaboration was really helpful and some of the relationships we built there. i have since reached out to folks and written some different panels based on those conversations we had. it really broadened my thinking and opened those doors where we can have broader conversations about care choices, pluralism. what do different folks need, what's possible, plausible so i think the collaborative was really helpful, particularly in that space. >> in some ways, even the language around creating more care options for families with children. i don't think i fully appreciated how even that language can be offputting on

some of the folks on the more conservative side of the spectrum. talking about broader issue of care was something that we did in the group. >> there was another hand. yes? >> [inaudible] it's wonderful work that's been done. the challenge is always when it gets into the policy process, there are the political pressures that folks who are having private conversations in those rooms are going to con -- to confront. just curious how you see the ability of folks, the inclination of folks who were involved to help carry this forward in that process. >> we've continued to be -- several of us continues to be in touch. josh has mentioned a couple of ways. i also think that -- i think the

message of what the convergens -- convergence model has done, i think also, when i have done -- [inaudible] what is the secret sauce that seems to help break through, we need more of that in such a polarized environment that we live in. >> i mean, i'm encouraged, we are seeing some of those bipartisan efforts happening in congress in real time. they don't always rise to the level of the trump-biden rematch but they're happening. there's a large group of people who want to see change in this space. so continuing the conversation at the federal level but there's a tremendous amount happening at the state and local level too whether it's red states, blue states or purple states. and also among employers who are members of our group. what can amazon and walmart and the chamber, what are the steps

that the private sector can also take in helping support families. so it crossed a number of different dimensions but i think the actual ground that it's hitting is pretty fertile for reform right now. >> thanks. i am i am mcginnis on the next panel. and i apologize because i feel like my question is not in the spirit of convergence, which i participated in and the process is amazing. it is about what you can come together around. but i also think it's useful to know where the kind of places you can get stuck on an issue that aren't constructive are. where there any proposals that everyone thought it was a terrible idea, or that were particularly divisive, that once i loved and the others i didn't like? >> i can't end here.

>> i do think the child care space is particularly contentious. no surprise to anyone here who follows the child tax credit negotiations were contentious. i think one of the pieces we ended up leaving out of the report was not including the economic implications of some of our family-friendly reforms for supporting women's work or gender actually. -- gender equity. that it got left out of the final report with intention because it became an area the group could not agree on. and had a lot of discussion about the end goal for family support, is it for economic stability, for the adults, for the kids? ultimately, the facts in the report are child focused. for the most part. that was another area that was contentious. >> i think we also, quickly, there are some groups of children we did leave off the

table. the fact that this is a report about working families and policies aimed at supporting work and families. we left out children whose families are not able to be stably employed. we did leave that out. that includes a substantial number of children who are -- you have the highest needs. those were some things that i still -- i read the report and i know those moments and i agree with why we went there. but it is not something that i particularly love. >> a question in the back. >> i just wanted to follow-up on the discussion, i have had one foot in the health world and one foot in my family and education world.

i'm shocked by the salary difference between a nurse and a teacher. and that goes through headstart, childcare, etc. you mentioned it. can you say anything more about what needs to be done to the salary levels? the final question is, did you say anything about child welfare policies, and the amount of abuse of our children? which is primarily addiction. >> on the latter, hugely important issue. again, one of those where the scoping of the project did not allow us to get into the foster system and abuse and neglected kids. maybe we can do another version of it. again, another area of debate following up to maya's was the childcare workforce. that came up to hear there are reference to it in the support but it is not a focus.

i guess that would be my answer to the question about salary disparities between health care worker and a childcare worker, or between at this point, a retailer and fast food worker and a childcare worker. we went into the recommendations for supporting families from family, from the parent-child perspective and less from exile janice, if that makes sense. that was something we did and address in our report. i don't know if you all have things to add to that. >> i would also add, you are right, the issue around wages for the early child care workforce is a big one. it is also the closely tied around equity. gender equity but also racial equity. a large portion of the workforce in the childcare space is our black and brown women who historically have been underpaid. this is also a place where a lot of states are innovating.

i was going to bring molly in. i know you are our moderator but i know there are many states that are leading the charge in addressing this and seeing this as a necessary condition to really expand and build the child care market. >> right, i have a project here, brooksings, looking at issue us -- issues around the care workforce. what is interesting with this conversation, i think there's an argument to be made, and i know you couldn't do everything in one report. in one year, this is a bigger project. but there is an argument to be made that some of the benefits of raising pay for the child care work forbes is really for the families as well. this is an equity issue. it's a vastly underpaid workforce, disproportionately black and brown women. but also for families looking for childcare, there are huge childcare shortages. and it's very difficult for child care centers to attract a

workforce when you are referencing, it pays more to go across the street to a home depot or cvs than what we pay our childcare workforce. it is an interesting one for me, whether or not that was in the scope. it wasn't for lots of reasons. . i'm curious if there is any sense from the conversations you had as a group of partisan differences on this front. as we just heard, there are a lot of interesting things happening at the state and local levels, including in virginia with the republican governor. there's been some childcare wage -- worker wages p as some of it is more partisan. some of these increases is coming more from democrats. but especially in childcare, it seems to be more bipartisan. i didn't know if any of the conversations in your group reflected commonality. has this been an area of collaboration and opportunity? >> it's all excellent points.

i do think that was an area that ran into -- so in child care in our group, there's a divide between point taken that they flow between the quality of the child care force and families, understood. but one level down, i felt like we had a more fundamental debate about why are other people paid to watch kids and not parents. and there was a lot of tension between stay at home parenting and formal child care and we couldn't square that circle well. which is why we ended up with creating more options. more options to stay home, more options to work part time. more care options, both with a -- both within a center and a faith-based organization. family and friends. but we were kind of down at that root of the problem and sadly didn't really -- weren't able to address the child care workforce issue specifically.

>> we have a question. >> well, this conversation is timely because today muriel bowser released her budgets where she zeroed out augment -- augmented pay for childcare workers. anyone want to offer an opinion? >> i'm taking a moderator prerogative to say i'm deeply disappointed by the announcement today. in fact, it was at a brookings event that was held just a few months ago that i attended that our colleague hosted around paid leave and other early childhood interventions. we listed up the example of washington, d.c. as exemplary. there's an incredible program here called the pay equity fund and basically, d.c. has made a commitment to put child care providers on par with school teachers in terms of pay based on education.

so if you have a bachelor's degree and work in early childhood, you get the same as if you were a teacher. it means for a child care provider, up to about a $12,000 or $13,000 a year bonus. it's really important in d.c. i have three young children. i have benefited from our free pre-k-3 and pre-k four, it left quite a disparity. that we had an early childhood school based workforce that was well compensated and terribly low paid. childcare providers who are on public assistance. his criminal, in my view, how low paid the childcare workforce is. given they're looking after our future human capital and our loved onings. -- loved i was very proud to be ones. a d.c. resident knowing this program listed. i've talked about it to many other states and cities as one of the best examples of a state or city really investigationing -- investing in a childcare workforce. i think it would be a mistake for d.c. to do this and it's very

disappointing. what i'm hoping to see is more cities and states doing interventions like this as opposed to taking away what is a model example. i have talked to folks in new york city about it as a model to replicate. i would say this is deeply disappointing news. i hope it is not the end of the story and i appreciate your question. >> and maybe to wrap it on that, on your question. there's so much that we disagree about. so many issues we didn't cover or were not able to reach whether it is educational or health care. . yet there are 25 -- where there is broad agreement as ways to move forward. i do think that kane get lost in our national conversation. i would love to see the pieces where there's agreement move forward with usuallicy. -- with urgency. >> time for one more question? ok, great.

>> just in reference to murriel bowser and one of the main problems is the growing economic inequality that exists in this city. there's no proposals to say that people that make the most money should pay more in taxes so that we can have the available resources to provide better paid job slots for early childhood development and things like this. i was wondering whether or not that type of issue of growing economic inequality was trying to be dealt with in any of your discussions? >> i just want to make the point that the early childhood pay for teachers is actually funded by a tax on the wealth est d.c. -- wealthiest d.c. citizens. it is an interesting example. this question of economic inequality or how we pay for these programs, was that a topic? >> certainly the latter piece of it and how we pay for these programs. in this case, a recognition that

we spend so much of our relative resources at the later stages of life. and so relatively little at the beginning. part of me is still conservative to say we're in a relatively unprecedented fiscal situation. raising taxes alone isn't going to do it. so our report talked about reallocating spending and where to do that. that is an important piece of it. and certainly the broader economic conditions impact families and all of these issues. there was a deeper level saying economics matter but also the relationships. that families can raise kids according to their values and are resilient with their setbacks. it was part of the tension in our group, it became everything or nothing. we were trained to scope and what gets included, because every thing impacts it. and what are we trying to do because there is any number of different northstar stars we could choose for supporting

families, not all of which led us together in a comprehensive way. that is a long-winded way to say, income inequality is not explicitly addressed in the report. there are lots of reasons for that. we are also trying to broaden out beyond economics and talk about the broader picture of what it is like to be a young kid in america today, and that has other factors in there also. >> final question. we're heading into an election season. there's going to be a lot of issues discussed. what about this experience gives you some hope for family policy. is there anything you're taking away that gives you optimism? either about a specific proposal or even just this approach that makes you hopeful? >> i'm going to start with the pragmatic part. we, the u.s., has joinedded the -- joined the below replacement

fertility club that many countries in europe and asia have already been a part of. i do think that we are going to have the incentives to support families with young children, are going to be even more paramount because we're going to be a shrinking society. we're not going to have a work force to support social security, old age. so i do think that in the coming soon, hopefully, we should be seeing greater attention to how we can support working families because of our shrinking pop place size. -- shrieking -- shrinking population size. >> yeah, i think i'm optimistic knowing that we had some strange bedfellows in this group and no one knew what we were doing until the report came out and all our names came out. we talked a lot about secret congress. that there are similar processes going on in congress.

folks are working together. i think we will all be working with them to come up with viable proposals that we don't even know what they look like yet until they come out and folks jump on board, hopefully. >> and i was going to say, the presidency clearly matters for so many reasons. i've worked on presidential campaigns. but in a country as closely divided as we are, a policy that's going to have broad based support from washington, d.c. to texas, where i live now, is probably going to come from congress as opposed from the administration because congress is always a more representative -- a broader sense of people. and because there is a growing bipartisan coming out of congress, that in some ways, have turned the dial on the presidential race way down and have my focus on congress, the

2025 tax package that josh referenced and on these bipartisan groups that are gaining momentum. so that's what's keeping me hopeful. >> thank you very much to our panel, that was an excellent discussion. [applause] >> that was such a great discussion and such great round of questions. i'm so excited to have our part of it, because when i sat in on that multi-hour discussion, i didn't know what to expect.

considering school board meetings regularly involve police breaking them up. i was nervous that it would be contentious in a way that was unproductive. so i was so just impressed with the moderation, with the care and respect that everybody treated each other with and the participant's willingness to engage in a good faith way. if either of you want to start with your involvement with convergence and the experience working in such a discussion? >> i will jump right in just because i have my mic ready. i want to say thank you for brookings for hosting this conversation and for convergence for their leadership. i was in all of the last panel, because i think it is so refreshing to have a conversation about reaching common ground. i think this conversation now is needed now more than ever. with convergence, i'm really

proud to serve as a board member. that journey started -- i'm doing the math because it started when i was pregnant with my son, he is now six years old. that started about six years ago when i was asked to join a dialogue on the broken bunt -- budget process. and that was similar to the last panel, another eye-opening experience on getting deep into the weeds on how to we come to a -- how do we come to consensus on addressing the fact that we are constantly moving from government shutdown to government shutdown. which is still very much the case. but through that experience, we were able to come up with some really strong policy solutions. through that process, i was really impressed by what convergence was about and it spoke to, at my core who i am is really about trying to find that common ground.

and joined as a board member and have been part of this work ever since. >> thank you. i have also been a board member for many, many years of convergence. and like maya and lindsay, been involved in projects. i have been involved in a number of projects. chiefly, the budget process which maya and lindsay were both involved in. but also mainly in the health-care area and economic mobility. and one right now on social determinants of health. and just to pick a few of the techniques, i think that is in many ways what i can indicate, having seen a lot of these different projects. there are certain techniques i think which are very, very important in why these projects are so important and come to success. one is the use of professional mediators and facilitators for these projects. as in the one we are talking about today. the importance of that is to

have somebody in the room who is constantly, as a professional, sort of watching the conversation, watching the body language, taking a moment in the coffee break to just ask a question of one person and so on. to read the room, in other words. when abby described this as a couples counseling, think this is very much the case of a professional looking at people who are arguing with each other and getting to the bottom of how they can find agreement. and that's a very important feature and you see this in almost all the convergence projects. secondly, the conversations often begin and certainly this is an important element, of trying to get at what are the underlying values, vision, life experiences of people actually in the room? even if somebody has got, you know, a phd or is a specialist

in a certain area, they are still motivated by things that have happened to them and the ways they see the world. one of the techniques we use is to go around the room and say why are you personally interested in this issue? and you hear the stories. i've seen actuaries for life insurance companies tearing up talking about long-term care and what happened to their parents. that shatters the impressions that other people have about what this person must be like, you know? because people come into a room and tend to pigeonhole people with different things. and so on. and these stories change the dynamics fundamentally. the third thing i will say and then i will stop, is again, what abby mentioned, the projects do not just take a few days. this is a yearlong process. this is not like the kind of

bargaining where you say we're all going to stay through the night here and reach agreement. we're going to lock the men's room and the women's room and you're going to have to come to agreement. it's not like that. it builds agreement over time, using the techniques i mentioned and others and that's that critical aspect of this. we can talk more about some of these techniques. but taking the time is really important to get to agreement. you cannot push it too fast and sometimes you don't get to agreement. >> maya, i'd like to hear from you about your experience working across the aisle. hearing stewart talk, i do think one of the special sauces of this is that it is off the record. i think especially with social media, people can be quite wary of something they're saying getting repeated, getting spun in a certain way. i wondered if you thought that sort of affected the way people might work together in a more on the record fashion.

>> ok, great. thank you. is this on? button, thanks. first i will also -- is it still on? can you hear me? thank you. thank you. first, i will also sing the praises of convergence. having done the process, i wish i could live my life with one of those mediators following me everywhere. it brings out your best behavior. i feel like we should all, in every conversation we have, pretend one of those mediators is watching us. maybe that's where we will be in a couple years, maybe not a great thing. but with the convergence folks, it helps you to think about how you are interacting and having discussions, one of the great parts of the secret sauce. if convergence ever asks you to be part of a process, say yes. you come away much better for it. we need more foundations to fund

them. no matter what policy you care about, having the infrastructure that helps us get to where the yeses are is really important. nothing is going to work unless -- there is going to be no durability in policies unless it has broad support. i think the work is so important. your questions about doing this in the real world, so i do this in 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 so there's that that they agree on. so your question, about off the record, is it easier? it's so much easier. one of my co-chairs is leon panetta and he always says nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. you can come up with certain policy agreements but you have to see the rest of them. but the problem is i don't think off the record exists anymore and i'm thinking about the capitol hill group that i'm working with right now. they trust each other pretty much.

a huge piece of this is building trust, building relationship, spending lots of time together and really getting to know each other on a personal level. one of the most important things in building this trust is empathy, understanding and human connection that only comes from time and frankly, some level of vulnerability. one of the best processes i've seen was in a different group i i was work -- that i was working with where we went around the dinner table and said, what was the worst thing that happened to you on social media? and the stories were horrible. people have of had had death threats, kids being threatened. but people really opened up in a way that -- a very diverse group, like, i'm loyal to one of -- some of those people forever just from that one dinner. finding ways you can build connection and empathy matters. it is also important to trust nothing you say is going to get

leaked. the bottom line is, i think the idea of off the record is over. i think it doesn't exist anymore. everybody says, when you're saying off the record, think about something that -- you would not wanted on the front page of the paper, but you have to understand it could be on the front page of the paper. i think there is a huge loss in that. i feel somewhat connected to that loss because i spent a lot of time working on campaign finance reform for a long time. i thought absolute transparency in everything was the solution to a lot of stuff in policymaking. it was one of those examples of something you push hard for, turns out not to always bring with it all of the benefits you want. there are unintended consequences. but i do think the solution isn't to believe that you have privacy and nothing is going to get leaked. it's more of how you can build enough connections to understand the reasons you think other people are saying things or believe things might not be there reasons. more about listening and asking questions, where we will find

the ability to do this. >> i'm very interested in asking questions because that seemed to be a big part of the process. it was not just fighting back with your idea. it was saying, ok, let me pause and ask a follow-up question. in addition to what the kids call trauma bonding, which is a way to break down vulnerability, what are other ways to foster that connection and compromise among people who you know have preconceived notions of each other or have that desire to disagree? it's for anybody. stuart, you seemed to jump on it. >> i was just going to give you an example. one of the earliest prompts we -- projects we did at convergence now, 10, 12 years ago, was on k-12 education. we had people in the room from two major unions. we had home schoolers. we had charter school advocates

and so forth. we had one terrible meeting where everybody just yelled at each other because they focused on what was going on right now, the issues in front of congress and so on. so we went away and regrouped and then we came back and said, let's not talk about any of that. let's talk about your vision of what an education system should look like 20 years from now. let's not even talk about today. one of the remarkable things was we discovered that people's vision of the future wasn't as different as they thought it was and we were able to kind of begin to sort of build by looking at the future. the what-if sort of scenario and an -- and then start to kind of walked back to today and do it in that sequence. as opposed to let's get into what the issues are today and let's see if we can make agreement. so there are techniques like that that can get people really off of what they think of the

-- their position and begin at least to entertain an get it out of the day-to-day. so that's one way on technique what you asked about. >> we are used to being in places where we're comfortable. we want to be in places where we're with like-minded individuals and we're not often in space where is we have to be confronted with difference. and so i think what is really

valuable about this process is that it puts it right in your face. you have to confront it. and you have to recognize that your assumptions and biases different might not be what we're expecting and asthma yeah mentioned that comes by connecting as a -- as maya mentioned that comes by connecting so you can get beyond those assumptions because we all have them. we've seen the ted talk of our brains being machines of inference. we make decisions based on assumptions and biases. but when we put those things aside that's when the magic happens. that's when we can dig into the solutions look like.

>> we have this small project call six us and it's looking at the dysfunction distrust. it's impossible to make progress on physical responsibility when you're so polar sized that nobody wants to do anything difficult. my colleague mike murphy is in the midst or just completing a project, coleman project who has written a wonderful book on this topic. people pick a partner from a different point of view and spend a lot of time and a couple of exercises getting to know each other and working on it over and over. what i've done different things like that, one of the best pieces of advice and that really works is when you're talking about somebody where you disagree and you feel that feeling of kind of outrage boiling up. outrage is the word that describes so much of the mental component of polarization that we're feeling these days.

feel it in your chest tightening or wherever you feel it. you stop and you can another question. and that's the only thing you let yourself do when you're feeling more angry and argumentive. it's a technique that is brilliant it does also work with couples. it's a really valuable thing. you kind of need the other person to be doing it too. just by doing it creates help for them to do it. there's also an example of whatnot to do. i was hosting a dinner, and i had meeting with 40 members of congresses which is is an incredible turnout. that is unique chance when you're trying to get people to work on something. i decided that the topic of this meeting will be all the things that you believe and tell yourself that are wrong. and so i said, ok. republicans, you tell yourself that tax cuts pay for themselves. no, they don't. ok. democrats, you tell yourself

that is you can print money or you don't need to fix entitlements. whatever the thing was. i picked some of the core fiscal myth that is many hold on tom this was not greeted with warmth and connection. this was not greeted with warmth and connection. this was not like ok, we are wrong and you are right. it was the most hostile, blown event i have ever run. and obviously was going to be because it was a terrible way to confront anything. there is no wrong or right. that's not true. there is a lot of wrong or right. nobody comes to what they are doing believing they are doing it for a wrong reason. if it really seems like what they are saying, what they are seeing or believing makes no sense, trying to understand what the story they told themselves to get there really helps. sometimes for my team at work i share the stories of my top 10 worst moments and there are many of them, but this is one of the biggest wasted opportunities, because i thought i would take myspace to explain why someone

else's wrong and i don't think that can ever work. >> i sat in on this meeting right before thanksgiving and i kept listening to moderators and i was thinking many thanksgiving tables would benefit from this. lindsay, i think if you did had a moderator at thanksgiving, many family members would think, kick rocks. like you can't treat me like this. it's a very -- when people agree to be in the convergent dialogue, it is specific that they know what they are getting into. how do you bring these lessons into your personal life in a way that people want to receive it? i remember listening to it and thinking there were so many useful things, but it is much harder to do in a casual interpersonal space. i'm curious about what works? [laughter] lindsay: you really dropped a bomb on me. i don't have a silver bullet for you. i think for me, it is as simple as and going back to what we

talked about, it is putting your own, it is listening. at bottom line. it is a deeply listening. i think many of us, especially at the thanksgiving table, are looking for our chance to speak. we are waiting for the person to wrap it up so we can make are important white. the bottom line is to look for opportunities to listen. and to truly hear the person, what they are saying and what is underneath what they are saying? what are the core values underneath what they are saying that you can connect with? that is really the most important thing for all of us. that is what we need to

challenge all of us to do is how we deeply listen and ways and this very much connects to my day-to-day work. i work with banks. i encourage, i.e. equip in new ways. they may have had conversations with communities years ago, but if you have that regular, intentional engagement and listening and you don't practice that on a regular basis, there are deep gaps that sometimes develop. whether it is at the dinner table we've got to listen more. stuart: that is so important, this issue of listening. in addition, whether it be the

thanksgiving table or a convergence project, to try to listen and find out what is really behind what that person is saying. again, it is often due to something very important, some values they have, or something that has happened. we are all involved in the budget process project. without mention any names, we had a discussion and a proposal was on the table and one person just kept finding, it was also nitpicking problems. i remember saying, why are you really against this? and the answer was fairly straightforward. it was, i have spent all my life fighting to ensure that low income people have adequate health care. and what is being proposed here will undermine years of my work. well, without information, we were able to think about how we

can address that. i think that is really come very important. that is one of the things that good leaders and facilitators are very skilled at doing. what they are saying is not really the reason and it can be very important to join inclusions and avoid exclusions. just at the right, strategic time to stop things going south. let's avoid a break when things are moving. to get something done. jessica: we are in an election year. maia, i'm wondering, is there a way that we can encourage productive dialogue?

[laughter] either as the media, in our lives, sort of any public way that we can foster productive dialogue as we have these political conversations and they will become increasingly fraught as the year goes on? maya: such a complicated answer from how i see it. because the stakes of this election and the past couple elections have felt higher to most of us than in previous elections, there is a different dynamic going on. it is a very, very strange thing to be a political independent in this town. you feel completely ideologically homeless and it is a town of two teams. even when people are saying, i want to do something that is

bipartisan, a lot of people say, how do you do something that is bipartisan? here is what i want the outcome to be, so i need someone from the other side to sign on. [laughter] and there is nothing wrong with not being bipartisan, you don't have to be, but you can't pretend to be bipartisan by sticking one of the few known republicans or democrats and calling it such. i hope i can do what i'm trying to say justice. this feels like a different moment to me were suddenly a lot of people believe the outcome of this election, not just the presidency, but the majority of the house and/or senate, is so important that it is not just the ends that matter. you are willing to sacrifice the means of how you get there because the ends matter so much. does that make sense? normally, there are many policies where there is lots of overlap. there are many issues where we can say, the political system is against this or we can focus on the 80% of overlap and that is

where we should focus and do those things, but so many people right now feel the outcome for -- of the election matters that they don't want to give the other side a single win. so it is a really hard time to do what we normally need to do, which is focus on the zone of possible agreement instead of disagreement. when i think about it specifically for my issue, because what i look at as a campaign where we have two candidates who are going to promise lots of things they will give us, not a whole ton of ways to pay for them, with the exception of where trump talks -- biden talks about tax increases -- i guess trump talks about tariffs. and a lot of things about what they won't do. how do you come out with a mandate that avoids the national debt? one of the things for the media is how do you brief the media not to fall into just one sides perspective. so when they are asking questions, they are more pointed toward understanding both, not to go for the headline grabber.

if somebody says you are willing to raise the retirement age for younger workers, most people say, we should consider that. there is a lot of zone of agreement. reporters jump in because they know there is a lot of political risk in that one. trying to figure out how the media doesn't play into this tricky situation is one of those things. my concern, there are a ton of solutions. right now, the unwillingness to do anything reach a huge stumbling block to your question. jessica: i think it is a good time to open it up to the audience if anyone has questions.

>> thank you. the panel agrees there is no silver bullet. i would certainly agree. the closest thing to a silver bullet i have discovered recently is a book by one of our great supporters, it just came out, called "possibility." it explains how convergence does work without talking about convergence. jessica: other questions? >> my question first by way of mathematical explanation, in the

information age, the amount of information outside my skull is vastly surpassing and accelerating beyond proportionally what is inside my skull. in convergence terms, that might be called intellectual humility. in this polarized world, do we see any new models emerging where i as a person with an opinion soto diminishes and has a smaller stake and more perspective that the collective of knowledge exists outside and i should count at the table that much less? does that make sense as a mathematical view and what that might imply for how we conduct ourselves in any of our gesticulations or dogmatism or things like that? stuart: i'm not sure i completely understand the question, but i would say we certainly see these days and increasingly difficulty of trying to understand or identify what is the settled opinion on something.

in science in particular, but other areas as well. i think that is just going to get worse. >> the likelihood that any one person is going to be wrong proportionally is getting worse and worse. stuart: i think that is fair. >> that means what i'm really getting dogmatic about something, i should be that much more circumspect. does that create a different psychology? stuart: and also i just think, you just referred to it, we are becoming more and more frightened by other people's opinions. you see it if you look at the data on what democrats are looking at or trump supporters were non-trump supporters. they are more and more fearful. i will throw this back to you, jessica. i think the press, the media has a very important role in this. one of the things i would

suggest is that the new york times use less of the word falsehood. so-and-so falsely said x. it could not be false. and it irritates people. if i'm told that is false, it causes anger. the attempt to try to get the reader to navigate fact in my view serves actually, it does not do that, it tends to upset even more those who would oppose it. jessica: we have a very high bar for using those types of words. i have seen many disagreements in the newsroom about this. but i will say one thing that gives me hope. i have done a lot of reporting on gen z and their political

beliefs and they are actually moving away from extremely aggressively stated political beliefs. the polling reflects this. i've talked to many of them. it is sort of a turnoff to have too aggressive a political belief because i think they are exhausted. they have had so much rancor. most of them came of political age starting in 2016. they were not conscious for political dialogue before then. even though they are marinating in this endless sea of opinion, i do actually have some hope that the result is not just further and further polarization, it is them saying, i don't like any of this. so that gives me a little bit of hope in all of this. >> i would like to disagree with stuart, but agreeably. [laughter] i think we are living in a world right now again. i think in a world where there

are a lot of things that are not true that are said, if you are as certain as one can be, it is helpful when people make claims of fact that aren't. i will address how i heard it. i think there has been much more information outside of our brains then within our brains even before the information age. we are just more aware of it in the information age. that is a truism that has always existed. i think you put your finger on part of why it is so upsetting as we start to see ourselves as smaller roles in the universe or maybe not the most evolved as technology becomes smarter than us in many ways, that is very threatening. so maybe people try to hold onto their beliefs even stronger. i think thinking about how the shifts in technology are

shifting our psychology in a way that seems to be harming our mental health and our ability to get along, and thinking about how we change that could be incredibly productive as we think about ai and big data and things. when it comes to public policy, it gives us an incredible ability to use crowdsourcing in a way that we have and when there are so many parts of policy that people can have opinions on, but there is no way for them to register. referendums is not necessarily the right way to do it, but there is a way to engage more voices and discussions of different issues. i think there is a lot of promise. lindsay: i do think, the media always gets a bad rap, but there is certainly a role to play in lowering the temperature, but so

much of it is driven by going back to the thanksgiving dinner table, it is driven by us. i was really fascinated by some research i saw about why the country and our politics are so polarized. it is because we are polarized. and so the congress being polarized is a reflection of what our communities look like, the articles that are in media are a reflection of what people want to read. it goes back to the conversations that are happening in our household, in our communities. and certainly convergence has a process for us to address some of these intractable policy issues, but we as human beings have a role to play in that as well. maya: can i disagree again because it is so fun to disagree on panels? i don't think that is true. i think the political environment and i looked at this for a paper i've been trying to write for eight years, so take this for a grain of salt, but i looked at all the theories of

polarization and tried to do a polarization for dummies paper. but one of the big things that contributes is the way that primaries are set up. they appealed to the extremes of both parties. people tend to be much more extreme than those in the population. the second thing is that even though we may not feel extreme, we are drawn to extreme headlines. click bait works on the best of us. i tried desperately not to click on click bait, but it calls you and sooner or later. it will find the thing that will get you there. you can create more of a sense of extremism by understanding that that is how our brains respond and creating ecosystems where we are not hearing the nuance weaves to. i'm not sure it is reflecting this polarized us as much as new forms of technology and our

political system are pushing us in that direction. lindsay: i think it is probably a both and to some extent. the sensationalism in media is something that people are drawn to, but there is a reason why we are drawn to it and then it perpetuates those sort of headlines. i don't know that we fully disagree here. i think both of these two things are feeding into each other as creating this self-perpetuating cycle of polarization. stuart: i think we all agreed as jessica's fault. jessica: do we have time for one more? we have one more. you choose. [laughter] >> i wanted to pick up on your gen z point. where there some young people included in your process? during covid, one thing that did

happen was a lot of us were able to zoom in to top people's meetings, the world economic forum, and i thought there was a promise that once we got out of covid, we would find that more common. a lot of the younger generation thought that promise was made. did we learn anything from covid or are we learning anything from what the younger generation want? did that come into your panel? lindsay: two really good questions, i don't know if i know the answer to either of those. i know that there are organizations and one of them also served. there is a gentleman who goes to college campuses and facilitates a converges process on college campuses. those sort of conversations are happening.

i know it was mainly people working in these organizations so we didn't have a younger perspective on that. and then what was your second part of the question. >> did we promised to do more common things when we got back together again? jessica: i wrote a longer piece earlier this year, does the four-year year anniversary of covid start and i think there has been change. actual, marked change. the legislative process as you know better than anyone is slow. it is very, very slow, but i've been covering these issues for 15 years and i've never seen so much movement and actual progress being made. i mean, there are some people who expect us to be sweden

overnight and we are never going to be sweden ever. [laughter] in any context. but i think that discounts a lot of the incremental change that has happened particularly at the state and local level. and even with the setback in d.c. today, there are so many examples of movement forward in paid leave and childcare. specifically on the childcare front, there absolutely has been movement forward for families, but it is slow. we are done. well, thank you so much to brookings and to everyone for coming and to abby for getting everyone together. so, thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> on this weeve bn showing recent supreme court cases the high court is expected to rule on by the end of ts term. we've been talking to reporter about some of the legal issues involved tonight we'll hear state's ability to deseed how cialedia companies moderate their platform watch it t on e c-span and you can watch all of our supreme court coverage on c-span.org/supremecour >> the senate ieachment trial for homeland security secretary alej mayorkas is exp to be next week. they charge the secreor

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