WASHINGTON - Over the last few years, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Hillary Clinton have become a Capitol Hill odd couple, working across party lines on issues such as their mutual support for invading Iraq and their shared concern over vanishing manufacturing jobs and inadequate health care for military reservists.

Now the two high-profile senators are at it again: They will deliver keynote speeches Wednesday on "big ideas for America" to a gathering of 400 prominent business, political, nonprofit and academic leaders, along with lobbyists, congressional aides and senior staffers for executive agencies.

The event is hosted by the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank devoted to finding creative, bipartisan responses to the country's rapid technological changes and demographic shifts in the face of economic globalization.

Ted Halstead, the foundation's president, said Clinton and Graham were natural choices to address the forum.

"In announcing her presidential bid, Hillary specifically talked about wanting to promote big ideas and a national discussion about where the country ought to be heading," Halstead said.

"As for Senator Graham, he has a strong reputation as an independent, maverick type of legislator who is himself interested in big ideas and who has shown the courage in the past to be outside the usual partisan fray," he said.

In addition to seeking the senators' proposed solutions to national problems, the foundation will release a report with its own "10 Big Ideas for a New America," among them "Every Baby a Trust Fund Baby," "Tax Consumption, Not Work" and "An Energy Efficiency Trading System..."

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