Dear Friend:

As Bruce Reed starts his stint as Executive Director of the White House's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility - he'll be back on the job in December - I'm taking up a new role as the DLC's President. I'm excited and humbled to be running an institution as important as the DLC , and as I start I'd like to share a few thoughts on the work ahead for us.

In the coming months we will focus on three interlocking issues, together forming the central challenge progressive governance faces in Washington, in state capitals and in city halls. They are:

• Restoring fiscal discipline in the aftermath of a severe crisis and a necessary stimulus and financial-system rescue;
• Launching a second generation of "reinventing government," through reforms in state, local and national government that let us provide essential services more efficiently and at lower cost; and
• Identifying the new sources of growth, led by private-sector innovation and export success, which can ensure a lasting economic recovery, create quality jobs, and keep America in its place as the world's most powerful economy, technological leader and strongest nation.

Our goal, as always, is an ambitious set of ideas that can help the country emerge from this era of crisis confident about its prospects and the progressive vision for America's future. To this work we will bring the country's best researchers and policy experts together with friends from Congress, the administration, state and local government, civil society and business. And we will bring the steady sense of mission that has defined the DLC and helped us steer by fixed stars since Al From and friends created the institution: the creation of a modernized progressive vision for 21st-century America.

It's a big agenda and I'm new to the job. So I hope - all of us here hope - for your thoughts, ideas, criticisms, help and support. If you'd like you can start now. Contact me at egresser@dlc.org.

Best regards

Ed Gresser
President, Democratic Leadership Council

P.S. For those of you in Washington, next Thursday morning we will release an innovative research paper looking at the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement as its 25th anniversary approaches this summer. Please contact Carolyn Burnett at cburnett@dlc.org if you'd like to attend.