- Working together across party lines is anathema to much of political Washington.

But today's guest says doing so is the only way to create solutions that last.

She's former Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square", where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is the president and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington DC, former Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings.

Madam Secretary, thank you so much for being with us today.

- Great to be with you all.

Thanks for the invitation.

- You've had an absolutely remarkable career and the work that you do continues to be so interesting, there's so much we wanna talk to you about.

But let's start with the BPC, the Bipartisan Policy Center, what it is, and the kind of work that you do there.

- BPC, the Bipartisan Policy Center, was founded about 17 years ago by four stalwart senators being Bob Dole, Howard Baker, George Mitchell and Tom Daschle because they knew and know, we all know, that the only way to successful public policy making that can last is through bipartisanship.

And I'd like to say now that we're the only group in town with bipartisan in our name, and the only way to get things done in DC is through bipartisanship, whether you wanna keep the government open, raise the debt ceiling, not default on our debt, have infrastructure investments, you name it, it's gotta be bipartisan.

- So why is that so rare in Washington and is it unique to this era or is that something that has always been part of the Washington experience?

- I think it's always been part of the Washington experience.

And what we've learned, and I've learned over my long career is that if you wanna make public policy that sticks, that's supported over the years and obviously tweaked and improved upon, but it has to start with bipartisan lawmaking.

And that's true now.

And when it doesn't happen, nothing happens.

Which is, I think, what we're seeing now, just kind of the works are gummed up, but things that happen in Washington tend to be bipartisan.

- So we're gonna get into some of the specific efforts that you're engaged with now, that BPC is engaged with now.

But people who know you will know that you served in the administration of President George W Bush as the Secretary of Education, but also on his White House staff.

- [Margaret] Right.

- Does being bipartisan require you to set aside your own partisan affiliation?

- No, it doesn't.

But it does require you to understand what are your must-haves, bright lines for public policy making and what are the other sides' bright lines, must-haves for policy making?

And where's the gray area between that you can come together?

Often with Republicans and Democrats, that's around resource levels.

Okay, you can typically find a number between what Republicans want and what Democrats want that constitutes some sort of compromise as we've done on infrastructure investments or funding for education or the level of the Pell Grant, you name it.

But yeah, no, you can be a partisan and have a core set of beliefs and priorities and still come together with the other side to get something done for the American people.

- But it's fair to say, is it not, that it can be politically perilous for both sides, right and left, to reach across the aisle.

And I think we're certainly seeing that in the current environment.

Talk about that.

- I think that's much more true now.

I'm reminded, in fact, I have a framed picture montage in my office of No Child Left Behind, all the vote counts and whatnot, which passed the United States Senate by a vote of 87 to 10.

- [G Wayne] Wow.

- Because of strong support from Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Judd Gregg, President George Bush, obviously passed the house with like margins and the guts of that law exists to this day.

So, yeah, I mean, I think it was easier when we were doing business in Washington parlance in regular order, when things took floor time and had amendments and people's views were aired and they had their chance to make their case, et cetera.

Now we lurch from crisis to crisis, continuing resolution to continuing resolution.

And a lot of those deliberative dimensions have gone away.

And I think it's made for less good public policy making and really a lack of certainty as we have short term solutions kind of over and over.

We're watching it right now, obviously.

- Yeah, we are.

What changed from days of yore, I'll call it, to today?

And again, we could do a whole treatise, a whole show on that, but what has changed?

'Cause something clearly, fundamentally, has changed.

- Well, not to lay it at your feet, but I do think the whole media ecosystem, social media, where people get information, facts and alternate facts, I think is part of the fundamental issue here.

Because we don't have common understanding of where our starting lines are, I think that's part of the problem.

Secondarily, obviously, we have an electoral system that rewards people on the extremes, often to the detriment of people who are trying to solve problems and get things done.

We're seeing that on immigration right now.

I mean, sadly, I can give you real time examples on a lot of these things.

So I think political incentives, the media and this lack of deliberative, regular order processing that we've worked on a lot at the BPC, actually, about those kind of congressional, the hygiene of the Congress, really, are three contributing factors.

- So I think you painted a very, very accurate description of what happened and where we are now.

How can that be changed?

How can we move back toward a better place in terms of bipartisanship?

- Yeah, I talk about how we need to build civic demand for responsible governing.

And as I travel around the country in this role and in others I've had, people are starving for that.

They want their government to function, to solve problems.

They get that this is not the way we ought to be doing business.

Sadly, those are folks that are often just either disgusted and tune out or are not in the public square.

So I think we need to be asking our elected officials at all levels, but especially those here in the Congress, how are you part of the solution and not just part of the problem?

Yes, you can have strong views, but what is your track record on various issues before us.

- Madam Secretary, you mentioned No Child Left Behind, and I wanna linger in that space for just a moment because I think back, the last 20 years of substantial, massive legislation that really changed something, I have a hard time coming up with a list that doesn't begin and end with No Child Left Behind in terms of massive bipartisan support.

What accounted for that at the time?

- Well, there are others.

I'm gonna put PEPFAR, and obviously that's now at risk, sadly, the investments that were made around AIDS in Africa and elsewhere in the world.

But sure, No Child Left Behind is among them, Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit is among them.

So, what was the question?

How do you do that?

You compromise, you talk to people, you build public support, you understand what the other guy needs to have as part of the deal, as well as what you need to have and you need to have a commitment to get something done.

And little did I know when I first came to Washington that No Child Left Behind, which passed in about a year, was breakneck pace for, certainly for something that affects tens of millions of school children and every single state and community in this country.

- Were there particular barriers that you had to overcome?

I think of the role former senator Ted Kennedy played in that, the real, I think at least from the outside, the partnership that seemed to exist between his efforts and the efforts of the White House to get that legislation through.

- Yeah, and it's a relationship business, politics, and you have to nurture those.

President Bush talked to the so-called Big Four, the people who were the lead negotiators on that legislation virtually every week.

He invited them over to the movies.

We had pizza parties, we went to school visits in the DMV and on and on and on.

But just that constant communication, the nurturing of relationships and another thing that I think was present on both sides of the aisles that's less obvious today is the presumption that the other guy is operating in good faith and in goodwill.

And from a point of good intention, not necessarily agreement, but that we all aim to, in that instance, improve education for students and dramatically decrease the achievement gap.

- So here we are in a presidential election year, and in addition to what you have already mentioned here, does that not additionally complicate bipartisanship?

- Sure.

This erosion of confidence in leaders, faith in other voices, all the various elements.

But that's what I think collectively, we at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and other organizations too, aim to restore that.

You'll, I'm sure, remember, George W Bush was gonna be a uniter, not a divider.

Doesn't that seem so quaint?

Things like compassionate conservatism that he championed and I don't want to talk too much about him, but it was an era and I certainly want to give credit to Ted Kennedy and George Miller and the folks on the other side, I mean, the financial crisis, Nancy Pelosi, Hank Paulson, I mean, there was a comity and a commitment to the progress of our nation that was above personal ambition or party politics.

- So one of the defining moments in the last 50 years in this country and certainly in the Bush presidency were the attacks of 9/11.

And I talk to people now, and I've heard this a lot in the last several years, that they harken back to the sense of national unity that we faced in the weeks and months and even years after the attacks, almost with a longing.

I'm old enough to remember the terror that was prevalent in large portions of American society in the aftermath of those attacks, so it wasn't always good, but is there a way for us to get back to that sense of national unity and national purpose absent some horrible attack like that?

- Gosh, I hope so.

And we're gonna work every day to hope that and cause that to occur.

But I think it does start with leadership and it does start with talking about shared values, shared aspirations and we had them on that day.

We can all remember flags flying in virtually every home and people joining the military in droves and on and on.

And so I think kinda starts with us.

We can each model that in our own communities and in our own families and give the other guy the benefit of the doubt, but also kind of return to that kinder, gentler approach for policy making and for our country and our affection for our country, our patriotism and our respect for each other.

I mean, how quaint, but it starts with us.

- We're taping this the last day of January, and the reports are dynamic, but it would appear that negotiations over a border security legislative package are sort of hanging on by a fine thread at this point.

How do you engage the good bipartisan effort that has gone into getting these negotiations where they are now, when it would appear that it's already wrapped up in the political context of 2024 and it's probably gonna stymie what would otherwise be important bipartisan legislation?

- I'm not gonna rule it out yet.

I mean, it does seem if you had to say now, I mean you wouldn't bet a lot of money, but this is a town full of things that seem a virtual certainty that then turned not to be true.

I mean, a week ago we were talking about how the government was gonna close for a number of days.

Guess what?

It didn't.

You just never know what rabbits are gonna get pulled out of what hat.

I think, again, in the perfect world, and I think there's a lot of appetite for this, obviously this is an election year, I'm hoping we're gonna have kind of a reset in '25 where we go back to regular order.

We go back to the deliberative process that allows people to air their views and take that floor time, have that public discourse and do it in a more deliberative way.

- So your organization has a handful of issues that you're going to be focusing on in 2024, this presidential year.

Tell us what those issues are and then tell us what specifically you'll be doing regarding each of those issues.

- Yeah, well, to pick where we left off, I mean, democracy, elections, election integrity, that's an area that we've been in for many, many years, working with states around the country to make sure that they have election systems that are well administered, highly competent and engender confidence with their constituencies.

So democracy, democracy, democracy.

Fiscal policy, we are on the brink of some very challenging discussions in early '25 when the debt ceiling will be before us again, the so-called Trump Tax Cuts will be expiring in 2025.

So our nation's fiscal picture, our economic growth prospects, all of that is something that we're gonna very much lean into and be talking a lot about this year.

Energy and the full implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, which had a lot of investments in modern infrastructure, so that's an area of strength for us.

We sadly have our foot on the gas and the brakes at the same time where we have money in the pipeline, but a permitting process and regulatory processes that are a bit gummed up.

And then of course, we're going to always be working on things related to the American people, like paid family leave and immigration reform and early childhood and youth mental health and so forth.

So we have a big menu, but our thesis here is that we can find common ground on these issues that Americans care about, and we provide a place to do that deliberative policymaking and enact common sense policies.

- Madam Secretary, there's a rich agenda that you've just sketched out there.

I wanna dive deeper, maybe into a couple of them, and let's start with democracy.

I know that BPC has been active around the Electoral Count Act.

For folks at home who maybe have not heard or perhaps understand what the Electoral Count Act does, could you sketch that for us and talk about what some of the challenges and some of the issues facing reform of that Act are?

- Yeah.

The Electoral Count Act reform happened in the aftermath of the events of January the sixth.

And I think there was, we all got smarter about that, it's relatively, prior to that day, arcane kind of administrative certification formality, but clearly it came to light that it was more than that.

And so the Congress worked in a bipartisan fashion with support from us and others to really tighten that up and make sure that there's clarity around the role that the Congress has in the aftermath of the election.

And so that's happened.

I mean, one of the things that I do think is, I guess the good of crisis management, is when problems are brought to light and it's clear that a solution has to be rendered, the Congress can and does come together and that's a fairly recent example.

- You mentioned youth mental health and that's an issue of great concern to us here at "Story in the Public Square" and also at the Pell Center.

What are you planning to do, first of all, what is the crisis there?

Because it is definitely a crisis.

And what are you planning to do to address that?

And this would speak to.

- Just last week, we launched a task force, bipartisan task force, chaired by Governor Kasich, former Governor Kasich, former Governor Beshear former representative Val Demings, to work on these issues and to highlight the state of our young people.

And we're really in a crisis with our kids.

They are disaffected, learning loss is a terrible tragedy, we have not recovered from COVID, social media is part of this.

I've just come from a conference in California that Common Sense Media sponsored with some new polling data about our kids telling us they're in trouble.

And so there was real bipartisan energy around safety online for our kids, but we can do more around issues related to drugs, issues related to counseling and trauma, et cetera.

So we've just begun that work and in a very bipartisan fashion, and we'll be having those recommendations later this year.

- So even as we're taping, Congress is having hearings or a hearing where some of the tech giants' CEOs, Mark Zuckerberg among them, are appearing on this very issue along with family members who have lost children to suicide.

Can you get into that in a little detail, the role that social media reform might play in helping ease this crisis?

- Sure.

The truth is, our laws and rules are outdated for this current environment.

I mean, we're very careful about food labeling and what ingredients, transparency around calories and protein and all manner of things in our food and we're, even in the media, I mean, there are guardrails about what can be on television for kids and so forth, but that is not true online.

And so, things like establishing the kind of content that can be proffered for kids 16 and under, parental rights and controls, just a greater understanding from our tech companies about what they are serving up to our kids and how we know about it and informed consent.

We all accept cookies and every other thing.

What does that mean, really?

And so there's really a great work to be done.

I'm thrilled that there's such bipartisan energy in the Senate in particular, around this, and hopeful that if we don't get something done this year, we certainly can next year because our kids are really at risk in this moment.

- And there's one more factor here too, beyond the tech companies, and that's artificial intelligence.

And I was just reading a story, I think it was in the "New York Times", about how artificial intelligence is being used by certain people to even more vigorously reinforce the issues that are affecting children, meaning manipulating images, meaning child porn and so forth and so on.

Is AI something that is on your radar and tell us about that, if it is.

- Sure, and it absolutely is.

And of course it's a frontier of every day we learn of some risks, some new risks, but also some new opportunity.

And so that's why our laws, our regulations, need to provide guardrails around these things.

And of course, the companies can and should do more.

I was just recently, yesterday actually, with the CEO of Pinterest, and they have taken upon themselves to eliminate any nude content, period paragraph, in any context.

So I mean, that's a simple and powerful thing that a company can do of its own accord, but we also need laws and rules and policies that really support our children and families and require some responsibility from these big companies.

- Madam Secretary, we've got a few minutes left here, but I'm finding myself wondering if bipartisanship is a goal or it is a journey?

Is it a destination or a journey?

- It absolutely is both and always will be.

And I think it's something that ebbs and flows.

I mean, we can get into the kind of electoral aspects where the political incentives are not in favor of bipartisanship, in fact, quite the contrary.

And we're seeing this play out in the immigration debate that you mentioned with President Trump, apparently, seeking to thwart the deal to keep it alive as a political issue and so forth.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about when I talk about incentives to do the wrong thing or the right thing.

And so I think, again, it starts with us as voters and organizations like the one I lead for some expectations of something different than that.

We need current urgent problem solving around that and many other issues.

- Is it harder to do this kind of work in a presidential year than in an off year?

And I think related to that, what does your staff actually do?

Are you meeting with congressional staff?

Are you meeting with members?

How do they actually move the agenda forward?

- Sure.

We absolutely do.

And this is a year of doing homework and policymaking and policy development and building that civic demand around the country for the kind of things that will be attended to and need to be attended to in 2025.

Some of them will require that attention, like the debt ceiling, like the tax issues that will be before us.

But certainly many other things.

The Workforce Act is up for reauthorization, so is K-12, so is the Higher Ed Act.

I mean, the Farm Bill is undone and needs to be done.

So it's always true, there is a real ebb and flow and a cadence to the presidential cycle.

And over history, election years tend to be less productive with that first year of a presidential administration the most productive.

So we've got to be ready to flood the zone after the election.

- So in the 30 seconds we have left, you've had a wonderful and remarkable career in public service, are you an optimist about America's future?

- Absolutely.

I wouldn't have come to work today if I weren't.

(all laughing) - Same with us.

- But our democracy and our structures, our institutions, they're meant to take challenges to endure over time and all of us, I like to say, we're never gonna have better government than the people in it.

And so if you feel that way, you've gotta come be part of the solution, put yourself on the field of play and expect more.

And that's what I expect of myself and my team, my staff, where we're on the Hill every day, we're working with experts around all of these issue areas and hell, yeah.

I'm an optimist.

- Well, we're gonna leave it on that optimistic note.

It's the Bipartisan Policy Center, Secretary Margaret Spellings, thank you so much for being with us today.

That is all the time we have, but if you want to know more about "Story in the Public Square", you can catch us on social media or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square".

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