2022 Year In Review

2. 15th Anniversary, Legislative Action Awards, and Freedom Award
This year marked our 15th anniversary, which we celebrated at the International Spy Museum with our annual Legislative Action Award recipients—Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Rep. Young Kim (R-CA), Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO), Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI)—and the inaugural Freedom Award honoree, Judy Woodruff of PBS News.

3. American Congressional Exchange’s Fifth Year of Trips
We traveled with eight representatives to five congressional districts, meeting local leaders and constituents from Florida to South Dakota.

Convening to Advance Ideas

4. Sharing our Expertise at South by Southwest
We were invited to Austin, TX, to host five panels at SXSW EDU and SXSW, an annual conference highlighting leaders and innovators in education, tech, and civics.

5. Launching the Senate Project
Together with the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, BPC launched a series of Oxford-style debates between leading U.S. senators. The first took place between Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in June in Boston and a second between Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) in August in Washington, DC.

6. The First Terwilliger Center Summit on Housing Supply Solutions
In June, BPC’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy hosted a day-long summit on finding meaningful, bipartisan solutions to our nation’s acute shortage of safe, decent, and affordable homes.

7. BPC’s Bi-Annual Elections Summit
In December, BPC’s Elections Project convened more than 40 panelists, 15 academic presenters, and 200 attendees from across the nation to tackle the most challenging issues facing democracy and elections today.

8. Identifying the Future of the Child Care and Development Block Grant
BPC’s Early Childhood Initiative hosted 21 current and former state administrators and child care leaders for a two-day, in-person meeting this summer, which will result in a report in 2023.

9. Capturing Ideas at DAC Day
BPC brought together representatives from the Department of Energy and the broader direct air capture (DAC) community to discuss the implementation of DAC hubs from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill.

10. Supporting the Future of Hunger and Nutrition Policy
This fall, the White House turned its attention to nutrition. Leading up to the first Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in over 50 years, BPC hosted a listening session to help guide the administration’s strategy.

Policy Collaborations and Recommendations

11. Supporting Small Business and the Economy
In partnership with Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices, BPC released a report outlining how policymakers should focus their efforts on combating preexisting barriers made worse by the pandemic and ensuring public policy supports small business recovery and growth.

12. Evaluating Elections, Election Workers, and Trust in the System
To restore and maintain trust in the election system, the public must have faith that poll workers will uphold their duties and defend the election infrastructure that allows U.S. democracy to function. BPC’s Elections Project released an explainer that surveys the state of temporary election-worker policies across all 50 states, highlighting both the litany of protections in place and the gaps that remain.

13. What’s Your College Really Worth?
BPC published a brand-new search tool that lets students and taxpayers look up the return on investment for their institution, including comprehensive modeling that addresses shortcomings in existing estimates.

14. Options for Modernizing Family Leave Law
BPC’s Paid Family Leave Project released a report on the Family and Medical Leave Act that estimates the number of workers who would gain the right to job-protected family leave under a range of reforms of the law.

15. Improving Reviews to Speed up Infrastructure Projects
BPC’s Smarter, Cleaner, Faster Infrastructure Task Force released a white paper analyzing the importance of categorical exclusions and how they can best be used to streamline the environmental review process under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Expanding our Expertise

16. Launching BPC’s Democracy Program to Meet the Moment
BPC expanded and restructured its Democracy Program to encompass a wide range of work across six projects in order to comprehensively strengthen the foundations that sustain representative democracy.

17. Congressional Housing Council Announced
BPC’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy announced the members of its Honorary Congressional Council: Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Sen. Todd Young (R-IN).

18. Understanding the Risks of Technology
BPC’s Technology Project announced the formation of its inaugural cybersecurity working group, who are debating and identifying the most pressing cybersecurity risks facing business, government, and society. The group will release its findings to the public in February 2023.

19. Inaugurating the Presidential Leadership Initiative
In April, BPC launched its Presidential Leadership Initiative with a bipartisan discussion at Decatur House, featuring White House insiders from the current and past four administrations.
Watch on C-SPAN

In the News

20. BPC’s Immigration Expert on 60 Minutes
Anderson Cooper interviewed BPC Managing Director of Immigration and Cross-Border Policy Theresa Cardinal Brown for an episode of 60 Minutes about the backlogged and broken asylum system.

21. Clean Energy in the News
Energy Program Executive Director Sasha Mackler joined PBS’ Energy Switch to discuss the importance of bipartisanship in America’s clean energy transition.
Watch on PBS

22. A New Sirius XM Partnership
In June, BPC Senior Vice President of Communications Steve Scully kicked off a new two-hour midday program on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel called “The Briefing with Steve Scully.”
Listen Now

As you can see, 2022 was a huge year for BPC with more great things to come next year.

#BPC22YearInReview