User:Bipartisanpolicy/Bipartisan Policy Center

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Bipartisan Policy Center
Formation2007
TypeNon-profit organization
Headquarters1225 I Street, NW Suite 1000
Location
President
Jason Grumet
Websitehttp://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/

The Bipartisan Policy Center is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that was formed in 2007 by four former Senate Majority Leaders: Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and George Mitchell.[1] The BPC works to develop practical bipartisan solutions to difficult public policy issues in areas of energy, transportation, health, national security, and economic policy.[1]

Organizational Leadership[edit]

Advisory Board[edit]

In March 2009 George Mitchell stepped down as a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center advisory board in order to accept a position as the American special envoy to the Middle East for the Obama administration. Former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt stepped in to join Senators Baker, Daschle, and Dole on the advisory board. The advisory board provides "strategic direction and guidance to the organization, and actively embodies the Bipartisan Policy Center's founding mission of working across party lines to tackle the difficult policy challenges facing the nation, while promoting greater civility in public discourse." [2]

Board of Directors[edit]

Policy Projects[edit]

Economic Policy Project[edit]

The Economic Policy Project (EPP) aims to offer bipartisan policy recommendations to boost financial prosperity and security. The project's two most recent areas of focus are the Capital Markets Initiative and the Debt Reduction Task Force.

In January 2010, the BPC launched the Debt Reduction Task Force, a bipartisan group of policy experts and former elected officials tasked with finding solutions for the mounting national debt. The group is led by Pete Domenici, a former Republican senator from New Mexico, and Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget.[4][5]

Domenici and Rivlin signaled that the panel would explore multiple issues, including entitlement spending reform, health care costs, and tax increases.[6][7][8]

In February 2010, President Barack Obama selected Rivlin as a participant in a new eighteen-member, bipartisan federal commission on the debt.[9] The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform first met in April 2010.[10] Rivlin remains an active member of the Debt Reduction Task Force.

Leader’s Project on the State of American Health Care[edit]

Led by former Senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, and Bob Dole, the goal of the Leader's Project was to create a bipartisan plan for healthcare reform and to demonstrate that healthcare reform is politically feasible. Health policy experts and Project Co-Directors Chris Jennings and Mark McClellan worked with the three former Senators to develop Crossing Our Lines: Working Together to Reform the U.S. Health System, a report that outlined the group's health care proposals. The Project crafted their recommendations around the four pillars of health care reform:

  • Promoting high quality, high value care
  • Making health insurance available, meaningful, and affordable
  • Emphasizing and supporting personal responsibility and healthy choices
  • Developing a workable and sustainable approach to health care financing

In September 2009, Jonathan Cohn, senior editor at The New Republic, said that the Baker-Daschle-Dole plan "looked like the kind of scheme members of both parties could support in good conscience."[11] In May 2010, President Obama cited the recommendations of the three former Senate Majority Leaders when discussing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[12] A comparison of the Leader's Project policy proposals and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, finds many similarities between the two. [13]

National Transportation Policy Project[edit]

The National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) is composed of a panel of transportation policy experts from the business sector and from federal, state, and local government. NTPP has proposed five goals to guide national transportation policy: economic growth, network utility, metropolitan accessibility, environmental protection and energy security, and safety.

In June 2009, the NTPP released its first major policy proposals, calling for a fundamental reorganization of the Department of Transportation. The report stated that the department should develop stronger ties to other federal agencies in hopes of elevating clear economic, energy, and environmental objectives.[14]

Members of NTPP include:

  • Chair: Dennis Archer - Former Mayor of Detroit [15]
  • Chair: Sherwood Boehlert - Former U.S. Congressman from New York [15]
  • Chair: Slade Gorton - Former U.S. Senator from Washington [15]
  • Chair: Martin Olav Sabo - Former U.S. Congressman from Minnesota [15]
  • Jane Garvey - Former Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration [16]
  • Jack Basso - American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO); former Assistant Secretary for Budget and Programs, United States Department of Transportation [16]
  • Lillian Borrone - Board Chair of the Eno Transportation Foundation; former senior executive of Port Authority of New York and New Jersey [16]
  • Tom Downs - Chairman, Veolia Transportation NA; former CEO of Amtrak; former Commissioner of New Jersey Department of Transportation; former President of the Eno Transportation Foundation [16]
  • Mike Erlandson - Vice President Government Affairs, SUPERVALU [16]
  • Douglas I. Foy - President, Serrafix Corporation; former President of the Conservation Law Foundation; former Secretary of Commonwealth Development, Commonwealth of Massachusetts [16]
  • David Goode - Former CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation [16]
  • Douglas Holtz-Eakin - President, DHE Consulting LLC; former Director of the Congressional Budget Office [16]
  • Nancy Kete - Senior Fellow and Director of EMBARQ-The World Resources Institute's Center for Sustainable Transport [16]
  • Ann Klee - Vice President, Corporate Environmental Programs, General Electric [16]
  • Mark Lasswell - President, CH2M Hill Transportation Business Group [16]
  • William Lhota - President and CEO of the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA); former senior executive at American Electric Power [16]
  • Bob Lowe - President and CEO of Lowe Enterprises, Inc. [16]
  • Sean McGarvey - Secretary-Treasurer, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO [16]
  • Bryan Mistele - President and CEO of INRIX [16]
  • James A. Runde - Managing Director and Special Advisor of Morgan Stanley [16]
  • Tom Stricker - Corporate Manager of Technical and Regulatory Affairs, and Energy and Environmental Research, Toyota Motor North America, Inc. [16]
  • Chris Vincze - Chairman and CEO of TRC Companies [16]
  • Martin Wachs - Director of RAND Corporation’s Transportation, Space, and Technology Program; Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley [16]
  • Dr. John Wall - Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at Cummins Inc. [16]
  • Lynda Ziegler - Southern California Edison, Senior Vice-President, Customer Service [16]

Science for Policy Project[edit]

The Science for Policy Project recognizes that scientific research is increasingly utilized to guide regulatory policy. Critics of regulation may attack the quality and interpretation of relevant scientific research in order to criticize policy, weakening both the scientific process and the policymaking process. The Science for Policy Project developed recommendations in 2009 to improve the way in which science is used to develop regulatory policy and to increase transparency in policymaking. [17]

Science for Policy members include:

  • Chair: Sherwood Boehlert - Former U.S. Congressman from New York [18]
  • Chair: Don Kennedy - Former Editor-in-Chief of Science [18]
  • Arthur Caplan - Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethic; Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics; Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania [19]
  • Linda J. Fisher - Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company [19]
  • Lynn R. Goldman - Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health [19]
  • John D. Graham - Dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) [19]
  • Daniel Greenbaum - President and Chief Executive Officer of Health Effects Institute (HEI) [19]
  • Michael P. Holsapple - Executive Director of the International Life Sciences Institute’s Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI) [19]
  • Kevin Knobloch - President of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) [19]
  • Kenneth Olden - Founding and Acting Dean of the proposed School of Public Health at the City University of New York [19]
  • Roger A. Pielke, Jr. - Professor in the Environmental Studies Program; Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) [19]
  • Sherri K. Stuewer - Vice President - Safety, Health and Environment for Exxon Mobil Corporation [19]
  • Wendy E. Wagner - Joe A. Worsham Centennial Professor at the University Of Texas School Of Law; Professor, Case Law School - University of Texas [19]

National Commission on Energy Policy[edit]

The National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) is a bipartisan group of 22 energy experts that represent industry, government, academia, labor, consumers, and environmental groups. Formed in 2002, NCEP has been advising Congress and the Executive Branch on energy policy and related issues. NCEP is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. NCEP has released a number of reports, including its recent white paper series in 2009 that proposes legislative solutions to climate change issues. [20]

Members of NCEP include:

National Security Preparedness Group[edit]

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, or the 9/11 Commission, was formed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the attacks. The commission was charged with performing interviews, collecting testimony, and developing a set of recommendations regarding the United States' preparedness for future terrorist attacks. The commission closed on August 21, 2004 after its final report was released. In 2009 the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton, reconvened to form the National Security Preparedness Group to monitor the implementation of the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission and to continue counterterrorism efforts.[22]

Members of NSPG include:

  • The Honorable E. Spencer Abraham - Former U.S. Secretary of Energy and U.S. Senator from Michigan, The Abraham Group [23]
  • Peter Bergen - CNN National Security Analyst and Author, Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation [23]
  • Dr. Stephen Flynn - Ira A. Lipman Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations [23]
  • Dr. John Gannon - BAE Systems, former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and U.S. House Homeland Security Staff Director [23]
  • Dr. Bruce Hoffman - Georgetown University terrorism specialist and former Vice President for External Affairs at RAND Corporation [23]
  • The Honorable Dave McCurdy - Former Congressman from Oklahoma and Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, President of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers [23]
  • The Honorable Edwin Meese III - Former U.S. Attorney General, Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation [23]
  • The Honorable Tom Ridge - Former Governor of Pennsylvania and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Senior Advisor at Deloitte Global LLP, Ridge Global [23]
  • The Honorable Frances Townsend - Former Homeland Security Advisor and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism under President George W. Bush [23]
  • The Honorable Richard L. Thornburgh - Former U.S. Attorney General, Of Counsel at K&L Gates [23]
  • The Honorable Jim Turner - Former Congressman from Texas and Ranking Member of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Arnold and Porter, LLP [23]
  • Lawrence Wright - New Yorker Columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 [23]

National Security Initiative[edit]

The National Security Initiative works with groups of experts on various foreign policy challenges. NSI is led by chair General (ret.) Charles F. Wald, senior military fellow Admiral (ret.) Gregory G. Johnson and senior military fellow General (ret.) Ronald Keys.

References[edit]

External Links[edit]