10 Big Ideas

I spent the morning at the New America Foundation's 10 Big Ideas for a New America which was bookended with keynote addresses by Senators Hillary Clinton and Lindsay Graham. One of the reasons I love DC (minus, of course, the taxes Nick) is because of opportunities like this. I also love my job for the fact that I can freely go to such events without penalties.

For those of you who don't know, the New America Foundation is a "post-partisan" public policy institute. Now I'm not exactly sure what they mean by post-partisan, but what is great about New America is that they break out of the traditional liberal and conservative norms and come up with bold innovative ideas that actually have a chance of working and change the way public policy is done. Today they unveiled their 10 big ideas...

1. Every Baby a Trust Fund Baby
2. Mandatory, Affordable Health Insurance
3. A Universal 401(k) Plan
4. Tax Consumption, Not work
5. An Energy Efficiency Trading System
6. A College Access Contract
7. Closing the $700 Billion Tax Loophole
8. Universal Risk Insurance
9. Instant Runoff voting
10. A Capital Budget for Public Investment

At my organization we have been working with New America for the past 5 years to set up child savings accounts (#1) and are huge advocates for a universal 401k plan where every worker is automatically enrolled into a retirement savings plan. One new idea that I loved though was the progressive consumption tax. Income tax is regressive and inefficient. This replaces taxing your income, with taxing your spending. And it would be progressive so those that spend more, pay a higher percentage. This would be a great tool to encourage personal savings too!

On another note... This was the first time I have heard Hillary Clinton speak in person. I was quite impressed. She really knows what she is talking about, was very articulate, seemed quite passionate (which is something that i haven't seen from her before) and she endorsed a lot of policies that we work on here. Lindsay Graham was surprisingly hilarious though he said he was a "global climate change convert." Global warming is a fact - it is real. It is not an idea that you need to be converted into believing. I still can't comprehend how people don't understand this!