The Rebuild Conversations

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  1. Jun 10

    From "Cut Your Bill in Half" to a Breaking Point

    This week Gary and I sat down with Congressman Mike Levin, who represents California’s 49th, the district that runs from Camp Pendleton up through north San Diego and into a slice of Orange County. Levin is one of the few members who pairs a seat on House Appropriations with a real decade of clean-energy work before he ever ran for office, the exact reason why we wanted him on. We talk primarily about the thing confronting every American these days: the cost of energy. The numbers are rough: energy bills are up about 13% from a year ago. Roughly 80 million Americans can’t cover their utility bills right now. Rep. Levin’s answer is the Energy Bills Relief Act, which he co-leads with Rep. Sean Casten. It brings back the clean-energy tax credits that got cut in the “one big beautiful bill,” makes data centers and hyperscalers pay their fair share instead of quietly handing the cost to you, and rewards the people who actually conserve. He also doesn’t pretend any of this is simple. He’s a clean-energy guy who’ll still tell you NEPA isn’t perfect, and who won’t let “permitting reform” turn into a Trojan horse for oil and gas. In his words, that’s the dashboard light blinking red. We got into something that should be simple and somehow isn’t: why a military family’s housing allowance is the very thing that disqualifies their kids from a free school lunch. As Levin put it, that’s about the lowest bar a country can clear. Tahra Hoops: Hi, everyone. My name is Tahra Hoops. I’m here with my co-host, Gary Winslett, and today we have a very special guest. We have Congressman Mike Levin, a Democrat representing California’s 49th Congressional District, first elected in 2018, flipping a long-held Republican seat, and who has won four consecutive elections in one of the most competitive districts in the country. Levin serves on the House Appropriations Committee, with seats on the Energy and Water Development and Military Construction, Veterans Affairs subcommittees, where he is obviously very busy. And before Congress, he spent more than a decade as an environmental attorney and clean energy advocate. Rep. Levin, we are so excited to have you here with us. Rep. Mike Levin: Thank you so much for having me. Great to be with you. The power of the purse Gary Winslett: Great to have you here. So I guess my first question is, you’re the only member from San Diego or Orange County on House Appropriations, and you sit on Energy and Water. The Trump administration has paused or canceled a whole slew of green energy and grid projects. So my question is, what levers do you have on that subcommittee to push back on that right now? And where do you think a future Democratic majority could move quickly to reverse course on some of these cancellations? Rep. Mike Levin: The good news is that our lever is the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, that the Appropriations Committee, both in the House and the Senate, has the power of the purse and determines how we spend tax dollars, and also helps to oversee how those dollars are being spent. And so this administration has run afoul of the Constitution in many ways, but one is undermining the power of the purse of Congress. The good news here is that the president submits a budget request to the Congress, and then we work on a bipartisan basis to try to iron out an actual bill that reflects our values and reflects our priorities. And on the Energy and Water Subcommittee last year, for example, the president submitted a budget request that eviscerated clean energy and propped up oil and gas at the expense of accelerating the future that I’d want to see, which is more clean energy and lower costs for the average person. But we were able to push back, and the Republicans on the committee actually needed our votes. They needed our support to get the bill across the finish line, and we were able to sustain, I would say, 80% of what we wanted in terms of clean energy funding, research and development funding, and the rest. And so appropriations is a very powerful way where we can combat some of the extreme policy proposals of the president, and not just on energy, where he’s done everything to go after wind and solar and batteries, you name it, often for completely nonsensical reasons. But we can stand up, and we can find common ground, and we can push back against some of the extremism. Gary Winslett: So it’s funny you mention the president usurping the power of the purse. That’s basically what SCOTUS said when they struck down his IEEPA tariffs, that if Congress had intended to give away its taxation authority, tariffs or taxes, they would’ve said so in IEEPA, and they never do. So this is a recurring theme with this administration. Rep. Mike Levin: The same is true for appropriations and the power of the purse. And while the Supreme Court ruled narrowly on IEEPA and on the tariff situation, I think you’ll find a similar ruling once the court actually adjudicates Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 related cases, which I think are pretty clear. Russ Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, he really is out of control. He is acting as though he’s in charge of federal spending. And look, we can differ on federal spending in terms of ideological differences and matters of different priorities and such. We do all the time on the committee. We have good back and forth, good debate, but we are the Congress of the United States. We’re elected by the people in all the communities across the country to represent their interests and their values and priorities, and we need to do our work, and the executive is then there to execute on the laws as passed by the Congress, including the spending laws. So look, we see this administration undermining legislative authority on many levels, and this is just one of them. Tahra Hoops: I’m glad you mentioned the budget, because the first time I went through the proposed budget that they gave to us, it was just about saying, get rid of anything that allows an American to have a comfortable life, and either send it overseas or send it to a defense mechanism, and just completely forgetting what domestic policy was, and forgetting how to have a secure future for American families. So it’s glad to see members of Congress being able to understand the impacts that it does have on domestic households, because it definitely is jarring to understand. But I did want to highlight some of the efforts that your team has been working on that we are definitely so excited to hear about. EBRA: the Energy Bills Relief Act Tahra Hoops: You and Rep. Sean Casten co-lead the SEEC Clean Energy Deployment Task Force, very long name, and co-authored EBRA, the Energy Bills Relief Act. Obviously, energy bills have never been more politically salient than they are now. We saw the recent CPI report. Energy prices, gas prices are simply through the roof. It was an issue before. We have hit crisis mode. And from your seat in California, where people are already paying some of the highest rates in the country, what does this bill specifically deliver for your constituents and across the board? Because they are truly at a breaking point. Rep. Mike Levin: You are absolutely right. The bills have gone up roughly 13% year-over-year, energy bills. And if you remember, Trump campaigned on cutting bills in half. I mean, think of that. Back in November of 20-- or October of 2024, he said he was going to cut our electric bill in half, and instead it’s gone up significantly, and the war in Iran has made it even worse. Look, you’ve got roughly 80 million Americans that can’t afford their utility bills right now. In my community, roughly one in four are behind on their electric bill. And so our bill is called EBRA, the Energy Bills Relief Act, and it has five main components, all of which I think are really important to tackling the challenge. First is reinstating the tax credits that we had in place for things like home and community energy improvements, solar and the rest, that were ended by Trump with his one not-so-beautiful bill last year. And bringing those back, I think, is really important. Two is making sure that data centers are paying their fair share. So we see the proliferation of data centers and hyperscalers all across the country, and we have to make sure that as this is done, the average ratepayer isn’t getting stuck with the bill. So we’ve got a mechanism to do that. Third is rewarding the consumers who are saving energy and embracing energy efficiency, and it’s astonishing to me that we wouldn’t all want efficiency. We wouldn’t want conservation. When I hear the word conservation, I think conservative. You would think conservatives would actually want conservation. But they’ve spent valuable floor time, the Republicans have, on trying to undo efficiency standards for appliances, for refrigerators and shower heads and all the rest. I mean, it’s just insane to me. Number four is providing the financial assistance necessary to families who need it, so that their lights aren’t turned off. And number five is giving a voice back to the American people again, so we actually have a consumer-focused energy policy, not one that’s just run by a handful of big executives or big tech companies. In California specifically, we’ve got some unique challenges, and the bill has a program designed to offset the cost that utilities are incurring for wildfire-related infrastructure. So wildfire-related costs are now a huge driver of the electric bills, and so our legislation has a mechanism to help offset those costs for the utilities, in a way that I think will be a lot more fair for the average ratepayer. Feeding military kids Gary Winslett: Cool. So Camp Pendleton sits in your district, and you recently reintroduced the Military Dependents School Meal Eligibility Act. What that does is it

    20 min

  2. May 6

    From Pro-Business to Pro-Market: The Rebuild Conversation with Rep. Sean Casten

    The biggest barrier to cheap energy in America isn’t technology, cost, or even politics in the abstract, it’s that utilities get to decide who competes with them. That’s the throughline of this week’s conversation with Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL-06), a clean-energy engineer turned Financial Services Democrat who has spent four years co-authoring the Energy Bills Relief Act with Rep. Mike Levin. The numbers Casten lays out are startling. There are 2,000 gigawatts of new generation waiting to connect to the U.S. grid. Only 85 of them are fossil fuel. The market has already chosen clean energy; the regulatory system keeps blocking it. Meanwhile, electricity bills are up 13% in Trump’s first year, and utilities just asked for $31 billion in new rate hikes. From there the conversation widens: what the One Big Beautiful Bill’s rollback of IRA tax credits actually does to coal communities, why one Category 5 hurricane could push Florida into bankruptcy, and Casten’s central argument, that the Republican Party of his youth was pro-market, the Republican Party of today is pro-business, and Democrats have an opening to claim the difference. Tahra Hoops: Hi everyone. My name is Tahra Hoops. You are joined here at The Rebuild with my co-host Gary Winslett. Today we have a very special guest: Congressman Sean Casten, who represents Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District. It includes a lot of Chicago’s western suburbs. He was first elected in 2018, actually flipping a Republican-held seat at that time. Casten serves on the House Financial Services Committee and the Joint Economic Committee. Before joining Congress, he spent two decades in the clean energy sector, including as CEO of Turbosteam and co-founder of Recycled Energy Development. In Congress, he’s focused on energy policy, climate change, grid modernization, and helping to lower utility costs for constituents across the nation. We are very excited to have you. Representative Casten, how are you doing today? Rep. Sean Casten: Good. Thank you for having me. Tahra Hoops: I wanted to jump into the recently introduced Energy Bills Relief Act, which is the most ambitious affordability-focused energy legislation House Democrats have put forward this Congress. It comes at a moment when electricity bills are up 13% in Trump’s first year, and utilities just requested $31 billion in rate hikes. Tell us what is in this bill and why this is the moment for it. Rep. Sean Casten: It’s funny. Sometimes moments just come to you. Mike Levin and I, who came in together in 2018, have literally been working on this bill for four years, and we’ve been half joking that we were just waiting for Trump to totally botch our energy policy and invade Iran to really make it resonant, so we could run between the shackles. Somewhat more seriously: when Mike and I both got elected, the Speaker picked us to serve on the climate committee. We wrote a set of 700 recommendations, about 300 of which became law in the Inflation Reduction Act. But when we got our report done, we had a bunch of outside experts vet it, and we said: what is the biggest thing we’re missing that’s going to delay our ability to achieve these goals? And they said, without exception, that the United States has never built transmission fast enough to deploy clean energy. We’re very good at building gas pipelines, which means we build gas plants where we can run the gas to it at the load. But we try not to build transmission. And so we said, we’ve got to have a package, and we have to have a package that when the window opens, it gets there. I say this in a climate perspective, but I could just as easily say it in an affordability perspective, because if you can keep your lights on and keep your house warm and get back and forth to work every day without buying fossil fuel, that also means you can do all those things without paying for fossil fuel. Clean energy and affordable energy are completely synonymous. And candidly, that’s always been the biggest political barrier, because truly prioritizing the interests of consumers to have affordable energy is an existential threat to the fossil fuel sector. Gary Winslett: It’s funny you mention transmission. Where you are, we make tons of wind in Iowa, and Chicago’s where it needs it. You’re sitting across exactly one of those transmission corridors. Rep. Sean Casten: Yeah, and there are multiple projects that would bring that wind, that cheap power, into the area, and they’ve been consistently bedeviled by grid interconnection. Grid interconnection is one of these things. The old joke is that asking a utility to connect to their grid is like asking a man for permission to date his wife. Whether or not that’s the best outcome for all involved doesn’t really factor into the conversation. When you’re sitting there as a utility and power prices are running 90, 100, $110 a megawatt-hour, and somebody wants to build a line that would bring $20 or $30 power in, that’s a competitive threat. You don’t need to be cynical about it. That’s just a practical reality. No business wants to compete with lower-cost supply if it doesn’t have to. And so we’ve seen time and time again utilities and regulators doing a really good job of building transmission lines to bolster reliability and an objectively terrible job of building transmission lines for affordability. Gary Winslett: Has your region, PJM, been particularly tough on this? Rep. Sean Casten: Everybody’s tough in their own special way. I criticize ERCOT all the time because ERCOT has remained un-interconnected. That’s the Texas grid. On the bright side, I think PJM has done a much better job than MISO of really embracing markets as tools to solve problems. But all of the regional transmission organizations are really bedeviled by governance problems. Their governance is set by their members, and their members, because they have so much capital invested in the system, are innately lowercase-c conservative. And a lot of what Mike and I have done tries to fix those things: let’s reform the governance process, let’s compel all the RTOs to be evaluated on a consistent set of metrics over the same geography and on the same timeline, let’s give FERC the authority to permit transmission lines, which it already has for gas lines. We know that system works. We have the ability to do it. But let’s get rid of these abilities for local actors to gum this up, while still making sure that we protect consumers and the environment. Gary Winslett: Of course. That would just put green energy on the same level playing field as natural gas. What we’ve done with natural gas has been great, but green and clean electricity should be on the same playing field. Rep. Sean Casten: Look, you can see it in the numbers. We currently have about 1,300 gigawatts of generation in this country. There are 2,000 gigawatts waiting to be interconnected. Of those 2,000 gigawatts, 85 are fossil fuel-fired. Everything else is wind, solar, batteries. That’s what markets want to build. Wouldn’t you prefer to build an asset with no operating costs so you can make more margin? That’s what they want to build. But that stuff is also the competitive threat. Gary Winslett: Could I also ask you about the tax credits in this bill? What do they do and why do they help? Rep. Sean Casten: The simplest way to answer is: we simply restore all of the IRA tax credits that were taken away in the One Big Beautiful Bill that Republicans passed. The reason is a little more important from a policy perspective than just “let’s get back at those bad guys.” If we were to fully embrace affordable energy, it would be a massive wealth transfer from energy producers to energy consumers. Every single American is an energy consumer. A small number of Americans are energy producers. Do the math. All is more than some. However, for certain communities, that wealth transfer is really, really economically painful. Look at what’s happened to the West Virginia economy as markets have turned away from coal. If you’re living in a town where the mine shut down, then the power plant shut down, then the Walmart shut down, and now the school can’t afford an improvement to the football field, you might understandably not see affordable energy as your friend. And part of the reason why we wanted to bring those tax credits back in is that when we crafted them, and when I say “we,” I’m talking Mike Levin and the other members of the climate committee, we were really intentional about saying we have to put incentives in place that prioritize investments in those communities that have historically stapled their economy to yesterday’s technology. Because they’re all Americans, and we want everybody to see this as a win, not just the people who don’t depend on the oil derrick in their back 40. And so those IRA credits with those incentives were really important to put back in. Tahra Hoops: It is great to see you champion that, because there was so much progress in the prior years and it seemed like we were just starting to see results. But then we have people across the aisle who seem stuck in the past. There was a recent quote from Energy Secretary Chris Wright who said, “I am pretty confident coal will lead the world in global electricity production”. I find that mind-boggling, because if you look across the globe, coal seems like something of the past. Right now we are in an all-of-the-above energy approach, and renewables are a part of that. You’ve directly criticized the Trump administration’s energy policies. What would you say to Republicans who argue that coal or fossil fuels are still the cheapest and most reliable option? Rep. Sean Casten: Look, it’s not freaking complicated. I could tell you academically all the reasons why, if you don’t have to pay for inputs, you’re going to have a lower operating cost and the

    34 min

  3. Apr 24

    From 50-Year Opportunity to 11th-Hour Amendment: The Rebuild Conversation with Rep. Josh Harder

    This week on The Rebuild, Gary and I sat down with Rep. Josh Harder for a second time, and I’m so glad we did. Rep. Harder chairs the Bipartisan Build America Caucus and has been one of the loudest voices in Congress pushing the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill that, if passed cleanly, would be the most significant federal housing legislation in 50 years. The catch: an 11th-hour amendment called Section 901. It was designed to push institutional investors out of single-family housing, which sounds good on paper and polls well. In practice, as Josh walked us through, it sweeps in the entire build-to-rent category, 72,000 new rental units a year, and forces a seven-year divestiture timeline that would effectively kill the market. We talked about why Blackstone isn’t actually the villain people think it is, why the best way to punish corporate landlords is to build more housing, and what it’s going to take to fix Section 901 before the bill crosses the finish line. Josh and his co-chairs just released a letter with 76 bipartisan signatures trying to do exactly that– the largest bipartisan push on any substantive policy this Congress. If you care about housing, cost of living, or just want to understand how a good bill almost gets fumbled at the five-yard line, this one’s for you. Introduction Tahra Hoops: Hi everyone. My name is Tahra Hoops. I’m one of the co-hosts of The Rebuild, joined with our other host, Gary Winslett. Today we have a very special repeat guest with us: Representative Josh Harder. He’s a Democratic congressman representing California’s 9th District. He was first elected in 2018, flipping a Republican-held seat, and in May 2025 Harder launched the Bipartisan Build America Caucus, which focuses on reducing regulatory barriers to accelerate housing, energy, and infrastructure development. He serves as its chair. Harder has been active in pushing for federal housing reform, including the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a major housing package currently under consideration, with a lot of debate around provisions like Section 901. That’s going to be the ongoing theme of this conversation, so we’ll dive right in. Representative Harder, how are you today? Rep. Josh Harder: I’m doing great. It’s good to be with you. Tahra Hoops: For listeners who haven’t tracked every single twist and turn of this bill (and there have been many), would you give us the quick spiel on what the now-amended 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act actually does, and why we’re calling it the most significant federal housing bill in decades? Overview of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Rep. Josh Harder: This bill is a little bit of a franken-bill that combines about 27 other bills into one whole. But I really break it down into a couple of different categories. First, this creates incentives for cities and counties, local leaders across the country, to build more housing. If they build more, they’re going to get more money from the federal government. It also repeals a lot of red tape in things like the HUD building code. The big thing there is the repeal of the chassis rule, which is preventing us from building manufactured housing. As you and your listeners probably know, we’ve had very little, if any, construction productivity growth for many decades. So this repeal is a chance to actually lower housing costs by building more homes in factories, a really exciting move in the right direction. And third, it also expands categorical exemptions from federal permit review so we can actually build housing faster. This is the same sort of thing you’ve seen in states like California and others that have passed real pro-housing legislation over the last couple of years, the federal complement to that. It does a lot of great things, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve been pushing for it for the last couple of months. We’re hoping we can fix a couple of the last provisions and get this across the finish line for good. Gary Winslett: Before some of these provisions that we’re going to talk about got added, this was something to be really excited about. The first iteration that went through the House, I was just amazed at how good of a bill this was. Rep. Josh Harder: That’s right. This is our first chance to pass a federal housing bill in 50 years, so I think it’s really an exciting moment. It’s turned bittersweet, unfortunately, but that shouldn’t cause us to lose hope. We’ve come to this because of such a huge grassroots mobilization across the country to finally bring up housing as a federal issue. There’s been so much growth at a state and local level over the last decade or two. This is the first time we really have a moment at the federal level, and there are so many good ideas in this bill that are going to do a ton of good. One thing I’m really excited about is that this helps build more pro-growth zoning practices for cities that actually want to grow. We’re very consumed sometimes with cities that don’t want to do anything, but there’s a whole section of cities out there that really want to build more housing. They just don’t know how. This bill is going to have a lot of support to make sure those folks can actually pass pro-growth measures that accelerate more housing construction. So yes, there’s a whole lot of good things in here, and it’s the result of years of hard work. The Build America Caucus & Energy Permitting Gary Winslett: I’d love to talk about how it fits into your broader political trajectory. You launched the Build America Caucus last year to cut red tape, to get federal housing, energy, and infrastructure projects actually built. Where does ROAD fit into that broader project? Rep. Josh Harder: This is our top priority this Congress. It’s the reason we created the caucus, because there really was not a hub for this type of work. This work spans a lot of different congressional committees, and we wanted something that would be a little more collaborative. Frankly, there are also a lot of folks who weren’t on the main committee that manages housing (the Financial Services Committee in the House) who wanted to be involved in this work. We knew it was going to be bipartisan, we knew it was going to get a lot of momentum, and that’s why we created it in the first place. The second big effort we’re working on in conjunction with this housing bill is an effort to get an energy permitting bill across the finish line, to make it easier to build energy and lower costs, which I think is especially important when we’re seeing demand growth in artificial intelligence and data center construction across the country. That’s our second priority. But this housing effort is really the reason we constructed this caucus in the first place. Gary Winslett: It would be really great to see. It was so disappointing when we didn’t get EPRA across the line in the last Congress. So it would be really great to see its successor be really good and do well. Rep. Josh Harder: There’s some real momentum. There are ongoing negotiations. Ultimately, we need a lot of trust. This administration has unfortunately created a bit of a political vendetta against clean energy projects. They’ve canceled solar projects that were days away from construction and actually offering power to homes. One real precondition for getting an energy permitting bill across the line is going to be some type of guarantee that this administration is actually going to support all-of-the-above energy, not just fossil fuels, which they clearly love, but nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal. If we can get that type of commitment, the policy here is pretty well understood, with broad bipartisan agreement behind it. Really, the limiting factor at this moment is the trust to actually get a deal. Tahra Hoops: Trust seems to be a major key when it comes to any energy infrastructure project. Before we go off on a major tangent, it is just so politically salient right now. When you’re going outside in your car and you see gas prices being screamed at you, and at the end of the month you’re getting utility bills, knowing that remains a major priority for your caucus is always reassuring for us to hear. But to shift gears a little bit and get back into the nitty gritty: Section 901 Explained Tahra Hoops: Could you walk us through what Section 901 (which sounds very wonky as it is) actually is, how it kind of got snuck in there, and why we might have some faults with it? Rep. Josh Harder: There’s been a lot of concern over the last couple of years about institutional investment in single-family homes. Think about this as Blackstone or BlackRock (sometimes people get a little confused in the memes online) buying all the homes across the country, and that’s the reason housing prices are so high. I think most of the policy wonks who look at this issue will tell you that’s not entirely true. Institutional owners have less than 1% of the single-family housing stock across the country. But in some areas it can be a lot higher: in metro Atlanta, for instance, more than 30% of single-family homes are owned by institutional investors. So certainly it is a concern, and there’s been bipartisan agreement on it. Trump has talked about this in his State of the Union, and he’s tweeted a lot about it as well. He’s said this is something we really need to fix. We need to get large hedge funds and private equity firms out of the housing business. That’s gotten a lot of support from the left wing of the Democratic Party as well, which is always skeptical about corporate ownership. There are real concerns there, and that’s why ultimately, in this bill, there was an 11th-hour change to put in a provision that would put some real limits on institutional ownership in the housing market. I think it was well-intentioned. Unfortunately, because it was drafted at the last minute an

    27 min

  4. Mar 23

    From Housing Crisis to Energy Revolution: The Rebuild Conversation with Tom Steyer

    California’s affordability crisis isn’t slowing down — so we brought on Tom Steyer to talk about what it would actually take to fix it. In this episode, we dig into his plan to build a million homes in four years, why your electricity bill is so high and who profits from it, and whether California can lead a clean energy revolution that’s already underway around the world. Housing, energy, food costs — it’s all on the table. These are the questions Californians are asking every month when the bills come due. Introduction Tahra Hoops: Welcome to the Rebuild. I’m one of your hosts, Tahra Hoops, joined with Gary Winslett, and today we have an incredible guest. We are joined by Tom Steyer, investor, climate activist, and candidate for Governor of California. Tom is the founder of Farallon Capital and the progressive nonprofit NextGen America. He’s spent the last 15 years putting his own resources towards California ballot fights on climate, taxes, and economic fairness. Now he’s running on the most urgent issue facing the state: the cost of living. We’re thrilled to have him here to talk housing, energy costs, and what it would take to actually make California affordable. Tom, welcome to the show. Tom Steyer: Thank you very much for having me. Housing Crisis & Building 1 Million Homes Tahra Hoops: One of the reasons I was so interested to have you on is that I attended one of your housing talks a couple weeks ago in Los Angeles, where housing activists and yourself discussed ways to actually make housing affordable. It’s now one of the major promises of your campaign, to build one million homes in four years. That’s a huge promise. So what does the Governor’s office actually control that could help make those numbers achievable? Tom Steyer: There are a number of issues that have to be dealt with urgently, permitting, zoning, cost per square foot, and relationships with local cities and counties. In every one of these areas, we have to move with urgency. And let me say, this is an urgent issue because Californians cannot afford to live here anymore. The number one bill they have every month is housing. Getting this right is not a nice to have, it’s a have to have. We are in a crisis. There was CEQA reform last year — the California Environmental Quality Act — to try and improve permitting. I supported that publicly. There was a lot of opposition, but it got passed in the legislature. There was zoning reform last year too, which also faced opposition but got done. But there’s a lot more to go in terms of making the timing and regulation of house building as fast and cheap as possible. In some places in California, the fee to build a house is 20% of the cost of the house. That means the price goes up by 25% just because of fees. We also need to dramatically drop the cost per square foot of building. There are tens of thousands of permitted, zoned units in California that aren’t being built because they can’t get built to a price people can afford. There are technologies to build offsite and assemble onsite that are about a third cheaper right now, and people think the price could drop by half. Just to give everyone a sense of how harsh this is: the average first-time home buyer has gone from 28 years old to 42 years old. There are many people in California who think they’ll never be able to buy a house. And a house is not just some asset, it’s the place where you live, where you build a family, where you build your life. The last issue on the table is opposition from cities and counties. To a large extent, they feel that building houses is an unfunded mandate. When they permit units, they expect people to live there, and those people require education and health services that cities don’t have money for. So they push back hard. On that score, I think I’m the only person running for governor talking about this: I will call a special election right away to close a corporate real estate tax loophole that brings in $22 billion a year to localities for education and health. That should dramatically reduce their reluctance. There’s a carrot and stick here, if we’re providing this for you, we’re going to ask something in return. Modular & Offsite Construction Gary Winslett: Can I follow up on the modular points? We’re huge fans of that here at the Rebuild, we love technological solutions to the challenges we face. I had a whole piece last week on the American Housing Corporation doing offsite building and assembling on site. As you say, it saves a ton on development cost per foot. How exactly would the state help with that as governor? Is that procurement standards? Tom Steyer: I think it’s procurement standards, permitting standards, and regulations. But it’s also that people are reluctant to try new things, and this is something whose time has come. When you talk about modularization, I think we’re actually at a stage beyond that. When I think about modular technology, I think about building rooms offsite, putting them on trucks, and taking a wide load down the highway. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about technologies that can easily build nine to twelve stories, the ability to build apartments much cheaper, as well as houses. Gary Winslett: So you’re talking mass timber, that kind of thing? Tom Steyer: Yes, we’ve looked at that for a long time. But a lot of this is about building walls and floors offsite and assembling them on site. It’s been done very successfully with some of the biggest builders and homeowners in the world. The technology is here. The question is how we get it moving, and making sure the jobs that come out of this are good-paying, organized jobs. Tahra Hoops: This all sounds like a no-brainer to me. I’m originally from New York City, which did a lot of building in the past. I grew up in a row home, everything was quite vertical. I’ve been in Los Angeles for two years now, and the first thing I noticed was just how flat everything is. I’d go on walks with my dog and think, we could be doing so much more here. Why do you think Los Angeles and California as a whole have been so slow to build? Tom Steyer: I think there are a couple of reasons. One is cultural. When people are used to low-rise, they can’t imagine high-rise. They find it unpleasant to think about. But if you build it, that was true in New York. Before they built apartment buildings, everyone said, “I’ve never lived in an apartment.” Then they built some really nice ones and people said, “It’s great living in an apartment.” The other thing is there are reasons in terms of liability for developers as to why we never build condos in California. We only build rental apartments and houses, and it has to do with differential liability laws. There are a bunch of things we need to change. But the biggest issue is there has been no sense of urgency. I went down to LA to look at a low-income housing site with the person who developed it, and they said it took three to four months after the building was fully built to get hooked up to the grid. No one can move into a building with no electricity. So that’s three to four months where you’re paying interest on your loan, paying all your costs, with absolutely no revenue. That’s outrageous. We need to stop saying “let’s have the meeting in three months” and start saying “we’re having the meeting this afternoon.” There has to be a sense of urgency. Including ADUs, let’s get going, get units built, and make them at a price point people can actually afford. Tahra Hoops: The process isn’t working. Tom Steyer: We have decades of knowing the process is not working. So let’s stop that attitude. Affordability is at the center of our campaign. The ability to pay your bills at the end of the month is the biggest issue in California, and this government in DC is crushing us. I know it’s just one station, but $8 gas, what does that do to your monthly budget? Energy Costs & Electricity Reform Gary Winslett: California has some of the highest electricity bills in the country, and you’ve made bringing those costs down a centerpiece of your campaign. Your pledge is to lower energy costs by 25%. How are you going to get that done? Tom Steyer: I know everybody feels like that’s impossible. Let’s be clear: California pays twice the average cost of electricity in the United States. If we drop rates by 25%, we’ll still be 50% over the national average. So when people say that’s a big cut, yes, it’s a big drop to a still-terrible place. The three big utilities in this state are legal monopolies. You’re not allowed to compete with them. And monopolies always overcharge and always produce terrible service. They always explain that nothing else is possible, that without them, we go back to burning trees. Here’s how utility economics actually work. Most people think electricity companies charge you for electricity, have costs, and the difference is profits. That’s not true. What they do is get a capital expenditure accepted by the Public Utilities Commission into what’s called the rate base, and they get a guaranteed return on that rate base. So their incentive is to get capital expenditures into the rate base. If you and I are running an electric utility, we could put $200 million into the rate base and make $20 million, or do the same project for $100 million and make $10 million. It’s very much in our interest to choose $200 million. There’s no incentive, in fact, there’s a huge negative incentive, to do things cheaply. That’s a perverse incentive. I’m not angry at these people; that is what the state set up. And meanwhile, there is a gigantic electricity revolution going on in the world. The cost of clean energy is incredibly cheap and getting much cheaper. The cost of batteries is incredibly cheap and getting much cheaper. It is much, much cheaper than fossil

    32 min

  5. Feb 24

    From IEEPA Overreach to SCOTUS Reversal: The Rebuild Conversation with Ed Gresser

    In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the Trump Administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs — a decision with sweeping implications for trade policy, consumer costs, and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. In this episode of The Rebuild Conversations, Tahra Hoops is joined by co-host Gary Winslett and special guest Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, to break down what the Court decided, why it matters, and what comes next as the Administration scrambles to find new legal footing for its tariff agenda. SCOTUS Breaking News: Trump’s IEEPA Tariffs Struck Down Tahra Hoops: Given the breaking news that came out today. SCOTUS ruled against Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. This is something that many of us were hopeful was going to happen even though it took many months, many weeks to get this opinion to come out, which was worrying many people. But as you look into the document and see that it is over a hundred, just about 170 pages, you see that the opinions were quite long. And Supreme Court justices such as Gorsuch really wanted to take his time understanding why he was filing his concurrences and why he was striking this down. So you were able to gain a further understanding of. How it took this amount of time. Ed Gresser Joins to Explain the Ruling Tahra Hoops: I’m joined today by my co-host Gary Winslett and special guest Ed Gresser. He is the Vice President and director for Trade in Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute. Ed is a leading expert on US trade policy. He’s worked at US Trade Representatives offices, and he has been following this case quite closely. We’re thrilled to have him here to explain the court’s decision. It means what might happen next and Trump’s recent press conference. So Ed, thank you for being here Ed Gresser: Thanks so much for inviting me. I’m thrilled to be here. Tahra Hoops: So I’m gonna kick it off with you. Top-Line Takeaways: Why IEEPA Can’t Be Used for Tariffs Tahra Hoops: If you could just go through like headlines, like what exactly just happened, what are the top lines that we should be pulling from this 170 page opinion and what is going to happen next? Ed Gresser: Okay, well the headlines are: Over the last year, the Trump Administration has put in about 15 decrees of various sorts, tariffs on all kinds of things, from lots of things from Brazil to, you know, cars and parts to whipped cream, claiming it’s made out of steel to… most things in the world. About two thirds of the tariff money has come from decrees on using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEEPA. The dates to the 1970s meant basically to allow presidents to act quickly in, in the event there’s an outbreak of a war or a pandemic where you really don’t have time for Congress to legislate. The President can act fast and Congress can fill in and legalize things. In the succeeding weeks, which is actually how the Biden Administration used it at the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. First to ban some imports, and then to have Congress put things in law, nobody’s ever used to be behind this, and it has proven to be an unconstitutional use. You’re not allowed to take the IEEPA law, which is pretty expansive, and override the actual congressionally authorized tariff system. Over the past year, IEEPA has brought in about $175 billion worth of tariff money. $5 billion from telephones, a billion dollars from makeup, $3 billion from clothes, $3 billion from toys, a billion dollars from fresh fruits and vegetables. So I think it’s kind of come home for a lot of Americans and where they live and where they eat and all that sort of stuff. The Supreme Court has now said, you can’t do this. So all of those decrees are now struck down. What Gets Reversed: De Minimis Rule, Consumer Fees & $175B at Stake Ed Gresser: One final example, he used it to cancel the de minimis tariff waiver. So that led to many, many... Tahra Hoops: just to stop you there, in case people might not be familiar, would you be able to walk us through what that rule is? Ed Gresser: Yeah, the de minimis tariff wave, de minimis meaning very little tariffs on purchases of $800 or less, So lots of people used it to shop online. In July they declared an urgency to cancel that privilege. So people are getting fees of $50 and $200 when they buy something from overseas and have it delivered to their home. All those are not canceled. The government will be responsible to pay back the money that it wrongfully collected— all this $175 billion. The Trump Administration obviously is very, very dedicated to tariffs, believes in them, wants to keep them. Trump’s Response & Next Moves: Section 122 Stopgap, Section 301 Plans Ed Gresser: Mr. Trump this afternoon responding to this said he thought the Supreme Court justices were bribed or someone influenced governments to do this. Tahra Hoops: Oh, he stated they should be ashamed. Ed Gresser: Yeah I doubt they’re ashamed. He said that he’s now gonna try to replace this set of arrangements, both the 10% worldwide tariff, the 15% tariff, and anything from the European Union or Japan. The 50% tariff on lots of things from Brazil and India. First with a kind of stopgap measure using an old law called Section 122 that allows you to impose emergency tariffs for five months which I think will be 10% or that’s what he said, and then try to replace it with country by tariffs using yet another law called Section 301. So I think basically you can expect one: a lot of turmoil over repayment of this money that the government wrongfully is holding. And two: much more sort of chaos and upheavals in US trading tariff policy and relationships with our neighbors and our allies and other countries as we get up toward the midterm election. Tahra Hoops: Okay. So just to summarize what this opinion details and what it is exactly targeting, as you mentioned it is the IEEPA tariffs and those are going to cover the 10% baseline on all liberation day partners. That’s kind of the liberation day tariffs, the higher reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries, the drug trafficking tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. And the about 145% effective rate on most Chinese goods. Gary, did you wanna dive into what tariffs remain right now? Separation of Powers: ‘Regulate’ Isn’t ‘Tax’ Gary Winslett: So one thing I wanted to add on some of Ed’s points is that the court went out of its way to make sure that this was understood as the decision that was also about separation of powers. So if you go into the decision, they make very clear that IEEPA gives the President power to regulate in emergency ways, but that does not include the power to tax. That is an unlawful usurpation of Congressional authority. And it doesn’t make sense in the statute anyway because if you had some sort of true economic emergency, you know right after Japan bombs, Pearl Harbor or a pandemic or something like that, you’re not just gonna add a little tax to the issue that doesn’t do what you need to do. And nowhere in IEEPA, as it was written, do they discuss taxation at all. So you would have to imagine somehow that Congress had included it. This unwritten down power of taxation that they had secretly handed to the President in order to follow the Administration’s line of logic. And so for the court, this isn’t just about the economics of tariffs, as dumb as they are, and as much as you and I would point out they are unhelpful for the courts, this is also about pushing back against an imperial presidency. So it is not just that these tariffs do not make sense, they exceed presidential authority and that is why they were unlawful. So it’s not just that Trump has been taxing your groceries idiotically, he has been taxing your groceries idiotically and unlawfully. It’s this separation of powers thing that’s really important. Tahra Hoops: A key quote from the opinion is that there are nine things that the President can do under IEEPA is investigate, block, regulate, direct and comply, nullify, void, prevent, or prohibit. As you mentioned not a single one of those words is tax. None of them say tariffs. None of them say duties and they really try to pull apart the word regulate and its definitions, and clearly it felt irresponsible and was not able to convince the majority of the court because as you’ve mentioned, it is just unlawful to accept that definition, that interpretation that the Trump Administration was looking to do. Ed Gresser: That’s an important point, that constitutionally tariffs are congressional power and they are not the same as regulating commerce with foreign nations. The first enumerated power, number one: Congress shall have power to lay, collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. And then five lines further down, Congress also has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. So the people, the Constitution, definitely felt regulation and tax were two different things. And the Administration’s argument in the case was taxation is a form of regulation, and the court didn’t buy into that. Tahra Hoops: I had a chuckle myself this morning seeing that the Court went straight to the founding: there is no taxation without representation. I’m like, wow. They are really giving you the basics here, and you guys are completely failing. As horrible as it is to read some of this, seeing that just gave me a little dark chuckle. How Far Trump Claimed the Power Went: Gorsuch’s Warning Examples Tahra Hoops: One of the quotes that I found from one of the concurrences through Gorsuch was just eye-opening because this is something that I have seen and called out for many times as both of you I’m sure have as well, is a quote that Gorsuch said that before us, the President says he may use IE

    26 min

  6. Feb 13

    From Sticker Shock to Structural Reform: The Rebuild Conversation with Reps. Emilia Sykes and Nikki Budzinski

    This week on The Rebuild, Gary and I talked with Representatives Nikki Budzinski of Illinois and Amelia Sykes of Ohio to talk about something that’s affecting every family in America: affordability. From housing supply and grocery prices to energy costs, childcare, elder care, and even tariffs, we dug into the New Democrat Coalition’s newly released Affordability Agenda and what it would actually take to lower costs in red, blue, and purple districts alike. The Conversation Tahra Hoops Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Rebuild. I’m one of your hosts, Tahra Hoops, along with Gary Winslett. And today we have not one, but two incredible guests joining us: Representative Nikki Budzinski of Illinois and Representative Emilia Sykes of Ohio. Rep. Budzinski is the Vice Chair for Policy of the New Democrat Coalition. She represents Illinois’s 13th Congressional District, where she leads on issues like trade policy, keeping groceries affordable, and supporting childcare and elder care, with prior experience working closely with labor and manufacturing stakeholders to support domestic production and local economies. Representative Sykes represents Ohio’s 13th District, centered in Akron, and chairs the New Dems Housing Task Force, where she works on housing affordability. She was just tapped to chair a bipartisan Problem Solvers working group on tariffs, trade, and competition. So she’s at the forefront of efforts to ensure fair trade and lower costs for our communities. Representative Budzinski, Representative Sykes, welcome to The Rebuild. How are you both doing today? Rep. Budzinski Great, thanks for having me. Rep. Sykes Fantastic. Thank you for having us. Looking forward to the conversation. The Affordability Agenda Overview Gary Winslett Yeah, we’ve been looking forward to it. Both of you have been working on what the New Democratic Coalition is calling the Affordability Agenda. It’s basically a set of policies to lower costs for everyday people. Representative Budzinski, can you give us the big picture? What’s this agenda all about? Rep. Budzinski Yeah, thanks for that question. This was a real member-driven process. I want to first start out by saying the New Dem Coalition—we’re the center-left coalition in the House Democratic Caucus, 115 members strong. We all take on different kinds of roles within our policy platform. And as Congresswoman Sykes mentioned, she leads our housing effort. The Affordability Agenda, which includes housing, actually has five pillars to it. And we’re really proud of this, as it was a member-driven process that puts forward policy prescriptions that, on day one when we take back the House majority in November and in January, we can lead on and make happen to bring down costs in this country for working people. As you all know, this was a commitment that President Trump made on day one, and he has failed at doing that every day ever since then. The New Dems have put forward our Affordability Agenda in five key areas: housing, healthcare, utility prices, goods and groceries. And fifth, we address issues around family care, whether that’s childcare or elder care, that need to be addressed as core affordability issues. What we’ve outlined in our plan—we really believe these are winning messages and winning policies in red, blue, and purple districts. So it’s been a real team effort from our coalition, and we’re very excited that tomorrow we’re going to be rolling out those policies. Tahra Hoops We’re super excited for the release to come out. I love how you mentioned “when we win the House” because I’m like you — I’m going to be optimistic about these midterms. I believe Democrats are finally centering on messaging, and the policies you’ve highlighted in this agenda will help us get there. Housing Affordability I’d love to dive into specifics. Representative Sykes, as chair of the Housing Task Force, you’ve released the housing affordability agenda. Would you talk about that? What policies interest you the most? What might be overlooked? Tahra Hoops Would you be able to talk a bit about that? What policies interest you the most? What are some that might be overlooked to others? Rep. Sykes Well, it has been a great pleasure working with Rep. Budzinski and the New Dems to put together this task force and a group of policy proposals that, when we take the House, we can introduce and start working on day one because we have been working on it now. So we are the definition of prepared and ready to lead. When you think about housing, it is the majority of most families’ budgets. Some financial advisors and planners will say that your housing should only be about 30% of your total budget. But many people are seeing it upwards of 50 to 60% because prices continue to rise. So what we’ve been focusing on are a couple of things. We narrow our provisions into buckets of affordability, accessibility, and getting rid of red tape. Affordability is about supply. There is just not enough housing to meet the need. So we have to make sure that there are single-family homes, multi-family homes, apartments, high-rises, mobile homes—whatever people want to live in—we need to start building it and putting it out so folks can live there. Now, that’s a more long-term solution, but in the meantime, we look at down payment assistance, tax incentives that allow people to want to sell their homes and get other people into homes, and the Homes Act, which I introduced. It looks at things like how many parking spaces you need, what the permitting process looks like—things that slow down the process to get to our main issue, which is supply. We were very comprehensive and thoughtful when putting this together to address supply, affordability, cutting red tape, and getting people into homes they can afford and like being in. Gary Winslett Can I just say, Representative Sykes, how much I appreciate that you are so involved in this? Sometimes there’s this narrative in housing discourse that it’s only coastal cities having affordability problems. And they are—but it’s not only them. Ohio is too expensive. Where I live in Vermont is too expensive. Rep. Sykes That’s such a great point, Gary. Sorry to interrupt you. And I know Rep. Budzinski knows this because we’re Midwestern cities. And one of the best parts about the Midwest is that we have a lower cost of living. But even with that, the amount of money that people are making and taking home is starting to become very challenging for them to enjoy the low cost of living that most people enjoy in the Midwest, which makes us so favorable. Even if you don’t get a beach or sun all year round, we can at least help you afford where you live, and now once that’s a problem it becomes very difficult to attract and keep people in our communities. Energy Independence & Utility Costs Gary Winslett I agree. So next, I’d kind of like to turn to energy, which is another area where it hits families really hard when the electricity bill is higher than you’re used to or gas prices at the pump are too high. Representative Budzinski, I know you’ve been involved in energy policy for a while, and the New Dems have put out this new energy independence and security framework. What do you see as the key to making energy more affordable? Rep. Budzinski Well, energy and generating more energy is one of the five key pillars in our Affordability Agenda. It’s how we bring down utility costs. I would tell you, in my district alone, since this last summer, I’ve heard from constituents that they’ve seen their utility prices spike by up to 24 to 25%. So this becomes a very critical affordability issue. For the New Dems, we think a couple of things. And I’d highlight two points that are in our agenda in particular. One, this administration—the Trump administration—eliminated a lot of the really critical clean energy tax credits that communities all across the country were taking advantage of to build a new clean energy economy, to generate more energy, to get it on the grid, to bring down costs. So the Trump administration, by eliminating those investments in clean energy tax credits, actually hurt our ability to address affordability and bring down utility prices, something we as New Democrats would like to see brought back when we take back the majority. The second is exactly what Congresswoman Sykes said about housing. We’re for cutting red tape. We’re for cutting bureaucracy. We’re for building faster and bigger, and doing that now. And I think as it applies to addressing our housing challenges, it equally applies to energy projects. I am an all-of-the-above energy supporter, which means that we need to bring and build all types of energy, including renewable and clean energy. Obviously, as a coalition, we believe we want to get to a 100% clean energy transition. That’s going to take time. But in order to accomplish that goal, we’ve got to get out of the way and allow these bigger projects to be built. The other thing I would say, as it relates to building these clean energy projects, that’s been challenging is you see the Trump administration actually cut off projects that are almost 80% built. It makes absolutely no sense. So you look at Rhode Island and the offshore wind project, Revolution Wind. The Trump administration, even though this project had been 80% built to generate more energy, to get it on the grid, to bring down utility prices, tried to cut and eliminate that project before completion. It was challenged in court, and now they’re back to building it. But this is common sense. We should allow energy projects, once they’ve been permitted, to be fully built. And we need to make it easier in the permitting process for these projects to come online. I think another point I want to make, as we’re talking about affordability and bringing down utility prices, is that by doing this,

    31 min
  7. From Financial Reform to Factory Floors: The Rebuild Conversation with Aaron Shroyer

    10/29/2025

    From Financial Reform to Factory Floors: The Rebuild Conversation with Aaron Shroyer

    In this episode of The Rebuild, hosts Tahra Hoops and Gary Winslett sit down with Aaron Shroyer, former Special Assistant to President Biden for Housing Policy on the White House National Economic Council. Shroyer shares insights from his journey through city government, the Urban Institute, HUD, and the White House — revealing how local, research, and federal perspectives shape better housing policy. The conversation dives deep into the future of housing affordability, from reforming NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) and unlocking modular construction, to rethinking how federal, state, and local governments can build smarter, faster, and fairer. Shroyer also discusses his recent work with the Searchlight Institute and a forthcoming paper from Brookings, tackling urgent housing supply and infrastructure challenges ahead of the 2030 census. Whether you’re a housing policy wonk, a YIMBY advocate, or just curious about how Washington can help (or hinder) new construction, tune in to hear an unfiltered look at the policies, politics, and practicalities of fixing America’s housing crisis. Tahra Hoops: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Rebuild. I’m one of your hosts, Tahra Hoops, alongside Gary Winslett, and today we are joined by Aaron Shroyer, who most recently served as special assistant to President Biden for housing policy, the White House National Economic Council. That’s a mouthful earlier in the Biden administration. He also worked as a senior advisor at HUD and a policy advisor at the White House Domestic Policy Council. Before his time in the federal government, Aaron worked at the Urban Institute and for the city of Kansas City, Missouri. Aaron, thanks for being here. Aaron Shroyer: Thank you. Tahra Hoops: So you’ve had a fascinating career path in the housing policy world from working on housing and economic development in Kansas City to advising on housing research at the national level, and then also serving in the White House on various initiatives. How have those varied experiences at the city think tank and federal level shaped the way that you approach housing issues? Are there any lessons or perspectives from your time here that you found especially valuable in crafting policy at the national level? Aaron Shroyer: Sure. Well, first of all, I’d like to just thank, thank you both for ha, for having me on. Uh, and I’ll say that your new newsletter has quickly become one of my, uh, go-to reads in, in the morning. So thanks for all for all the work that you’re doing there. Tahra Hoops: We love that. Aaron Shroyer: And Gary, I especially liked your Scrooge McDuck mention from a few weeks ago, so we’ll have to find some way to work that into the conversations. Tahra, as you said, really those past experiences influenced how I approached my job in government at the White House. So my time at Urban exposed me to a lot of people ideas. It was really really helpful once I got into government to have relationships with those folks. Whether at the eviction lab or Zillow or a Federal Reserve Bank, or other places that I worked with while at Urban. One of the biggest challenges that we had in the early days of the admin is that we had really incomplete information from the ECS and census sources. So we were trying to make choices about the eviction, moratorium, emergency parental assistance and things like that, and getting the insight and just, having that ability to tap into the network that I had, from Urban was super helpful. And then, going back to my local experience, that gave me a real perspective on how so much of the federal funding that we put out lands in place. As both of you know, much of the federal funds are passed through to local governments. So it’s super important to design programs with the end user being the local government in mind. A good example of that was the state and local funds from the rescue plan, which were block grants, but they didn’t include the typical strings that you see from a federal program. And I think it is no surprise jurisdictions found those much easier to use than, let’s say, a typical HUD block grant. Just to bring that to the present day, what I’m doing now is writing about the ideas that were things I had hoped to do if I got the chance to stick around at the White House, but that I think are nonetheless important to get out in the world. And I’m excited to talk about some of them with you all. Gary Winslett: I wanted to ask you about that, Aaron. You were just talking about how the local governments like these grants that don’t have 84 strings attached to them, right? I think Ezra Klein had the most famous metaphor here, which was the everything bagel. I kind of prefer this metaphor of nine birds, one stone. Like you’re trying to hit nine birds with one stone and like if you try to do that, you just don’t hit anything. So I’m just curious, what are some of your thoughts on ways in which we can help policy makers focus and prioritize in terms of housing policy instead of treating housing policy like a thing that should also accomplish 18 other policy priorities? Aaron Shroyer: I think that it’s super important to, as you said, make sure that the programs that have a core purpose to build more housing are doing so. That seems obvious, but I think sometimes that gets lost. So one of the first papers that I put out followed the Abundance book, which I think was a great framework to think about these issues and it, um my paper focused on NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] reform. So essentially if there’s new housing or renovation that’s funded with federal funds, with HUD funds, in most cases before the parcel can be purchased, before a building can be built, the entity that’s sponsoring the has to go through a NEPA review and it seems nonsensical in a bunch of circumstances where it’s going to support infill development and building in exactly the sorts of places that we want to build. So I think that’s just one good example of how the government can really get out of its own way to focus more on the outcomes that we want to see and not the process to get there. Gary Winslett: I think that’s totally right. Something else I wanted to ask you about is, one of the things that happened during the Biden administration out in the market is that we got these really cool technological developments around modular construction, around offsite construction. Mass timber is a good example, but it’s not the only one. I would just be curious what your thoughts are on what the federal government or state governments can do to accelerate the rollout of these new kinds of building technologies? Aaron Shroyer: Sure. So I think it helps to just kind of put some numbers behind it. Right now, each year we build somewhere in the range of 1.3, 1.5 million in new units. Of that, roughly a million are single family homes and then the rest are multifamily. Of that combined total, less than 10% of those units are built with offsite construction. So if we’re going to dig ourselves out of this supply shortage in let’s say five years, we would need to build something like 2 million homes each year for several years, which would be an increase of 33% over the baseline that we’re at right now. And given the construction worker crunch that we’re seeing, it’s reasonable to say that if we are going to dig ourselves out of that shortage, then techniques like offsite construction are gonna be a bigger piece of the puzzle than they are now Gary Winslett: Mm-hmm. Aaron Shroyer: They are more efficient in the workers that they take to build a given type of housing. Gary Winslett: Yep. Aaron Shroyer: But it’s risky to invest in the factories to build that housing. There’s a lot of upfront investment and the demand for the housing produced is uncertain. So one of the ideas that’s out there is for local and state governments to invest more of their own money or passthrough funds in actually constructing those factories. And then trying to figure out some way, knowing the production schedule that’s out there through LIHTC [Low-Income Housing Tax Credit] or production subsidies or financing, figure out some way to purchase the demand for those factories as a way to de-risk those investments. Gary Winslett: Smart. I like the model of doing the purchase agreement to get the investment to be de-risked. I mean, it’s basically what we do in pharmaceuticals a lot, right? Like the government will guarantee we will bulk purchase all this stuff. And so then that makes it, obviously, a better investment for the business. Tahra Hoops: A lot of this kind of brings me back to your recent paper that you have out with the Searchlight Institute on Winning the Census, and I was so excited to see this paper come out because it really does have the political framing and urgency that we need right now to understand why the housing undersupply is such an issue. Because one, we should be building more houses on merit alone. Everyone should have a place to live, and housing costs are going up, but we’re not really focusing on the political ramifications of this. For example, your paper starts off with mentioning how over 1 million residents have left California in just four years alone. And obviously a lot of that started during the COVID Pandemic, but high housing costs was one of the main factors that they cited for why they left and they went over to red states like Texas, or you have people fleeing New York and they’re going down to Florida. It’s something Republican governors are even bragging about. So how should policy-makers respond to these kinds of affordability driven migration trends? Do you see this to be kind of like a state by state competition? Do you think it’s going to be a more coordinated national solution? I myself am more pessimistic on that side, and that’s why I like that your paper focused on governors in the near

    32 min
  8. From Policy to Practice: The Rebuild Conversation with Rep. Brittany Pettersen

    10/08/2025

    From Policy to Practice: The Rebuild Conversation with Rep. Brittany Pettersen

    In this episode of The Rebuild, we spoke with Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen of Colorado’s Seventh District about the economic and structural challenges facing young families today and what it will take to make America more family-friendly. Our conversation explored how rising costs of childcare, housing, and everyday necessities are shaping family decisions, why stronger federal support for working parents is urgently needed, and how Congress itself should evolve to reflect the realities of modern family life. We also discussed the broader need to rebuild public trust, invest in affordability, and restore stability to our political system so that future generations can thrive. Tahra Hoops: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Rebuild. I’m one of your hosts, Tara Hoops, joined with Gary Winslet, and today we have an incredible guest joining us, Representative Brittany Pettersen. She represents Colorado’s seventh district, elected to Congress in 2022, and previously served in both the Colorado House and State Senate where she led on issues like education, mental health, equal pay and support for working families. She’s also one of the few young moms in Congress, bringing a deeply personal perspective to the challenges of raising a family today. We’re so excited to have you. How are you? Rep. Brittany Pettersen: Yes. I’m so excited to be here. I’m doing as good as you can be in these crazy times. How are you doing? Tahra Hoops: You just summed it up. Every day I am just like: just get through the end of the day. Rep. Brittany Pettersen: I know. I’m like, focus on the issues we wish we were working on at the federal level. Tahra Hoops: Exactly. Yeah. That’s the importance of having state reps and even on the local level, so you’ve completely nailed it. But, I wanted to start us off on a recent piece that I wrote this week on our Substack talking about young families and how they’re actually delaying expanding their families. Some people on the right are saying people are not having kids anymore because this is a cultural issue. My argument was more so that it is financial. Of course, there are always many circumstances that add to the issue, but for me, affordability seems central… housing costs, student debt, healthcare, especially childcare. Do you think these economic pressures are the big reasons why family formation is slowing, or do you think there might be larger factors at play? And what can we do to make it feel possible for people to feel secure, to have a family? Rep. Brittany Pettersen: Yeah. fundamentally this is a choice that people should have. They should have access to birth control and reproductive healthcare to be able to choose if and when they wanna start a family. And then we should have childcare and make sure that we’re paid for doing the same job as our male counterparts and that we can actually afford as women, and as families, to take on having children. So I think that they just look at this fundamentally in all of the wrong ways. And this is about giving us that choice, economic freedom, reproductive healthcare, and making sure that we can actually afford and have a place to send our kids where they’re safe, where they can go for childcare in early childhood education, and then education at large. Gary Winslett: So you’ve talked pretty candidly about your own experiences bringing your newborn to Congress because there’s no real accommodations for new parents. I super sympathize with that ‘cause I have a 6-year-old and so I just remember always like juggling the work and family stuff. My kid is actually watching Odd Squad on the other side of the room right now. Totally get it. I’m just curious, what reforms would you like to see both in congress and in workplaces more broadly to make America more family friendly? Does it mean baby bonuses or paid family leave, or a bigger child tax credit or something else? What do you think would help make this easier for parents? Rep. Brittany Pettersen: First of all, in order to actually pass policies that are gonna address the challenges that families face, we need people in Congress who understand what families are going through. Oftentimes so many people are out of touch because of the money and background that they come from that is not reflective of most Americans. Especially not currently going through the difficulties that so many families face with lack of access to affordable childcare, with rising costs of housing, groceries, and everything else. I think it’s really changing the systems so that it is more accessible. Part of that is making sure of the very small step that we were trying to make when I was pregnant… passing a resolution to update our rules so that if you recently gave birth or if there’s a medical reason while you’re pregnant— because you can’t fly close to your due date, for example, so if you have reasons for being away you still have your vote represented remotely. That was a small step that we couldn’t, we had overwhelming bipartisan support and the speaker shut us down every step of the way, even though we forced a vote through a discharge petition. That was a small step forward. But we need to change the way Congress is set up. Our schedule is not accessible for families. If you’re expected to be in your district and also in DC to vote... there are ways that you can set that up where you can maximize your time in DC and not be away from your family as much. There’s a lot of things that you can do to support people there that make it much more family friendly. Fundamentally though, there are just people that don’t think that individuals like me should serve in congress. I should be home taking care of children. I can’t believe the backlash that I got online from right wing folks. You know this ‘cause you have gone through it, but nobody will take your kid when they’re under three months old because of the liability issue. Plus, we were on a wait list for over 13 months as soon as I knew I was pregnant until my son, Sam, finally had a slot. So he had to go to Washington with me. Whatever I was doing, he was with me. Whether that was spending 24 hours at the Capitol and sleeping overnight there to not miss votes. Sam was in it with me because there were no other options. And while I had unique challenges as a member of Congress, this is what families are going through every day. I don’t even live in a childcare desert and it still took me that long to have a spot open up. We need system changes in Congress. We need to pass paid family leave for folks. We need to make sure that women are paid their value. There’s so much that we can do to invest in our kids, to invest in regular people and reduce costs for working families that makes it more attainable to pursue starting a family. Gary Winslett: I wanted to ask you about those slot constraints. ‘Cause like every new parent I know goes through this. We went through it, you clearly went through it. Everybody has this thing where it’s like… you apply to like nine daycares and you may get into one of them. You may be on a long wait list. So I’m just curious, what do you think we could do to maybe alleviate that a little bit? Rep. Brittany Pettersen: Oh, there’s a lot that we can do. So… pandemic dollars when they were coming down federally, thank goodness Democrats were in charge during that crisis… When I was in the State Senate, we were able to oversee massive amounts of federal dollars that were trying to keep services and businesses afloat through such a challenging time. I was part of a bipartisan group that invested in the infrastructure and upfront costs of creating childcare facilities and meeting our regulatory standards, investing in workforce and loan forgiveness programs. We have really high standards for people who are going into early childhood education. They have to come out with a degree and then we pay them nothing when they’re there. So we need to incentivize people to go into these fields and we need to also help support the education process and the cost of that. We also need to diversify in, and I’m getting a little in the weeds I know, but... we need to diversify the types of opportunities that we’re creating. So, the United Way in Colorado, a nonprofit, goes in and actually trains women in child desert areas on how to start their own childcare center at their house and how to do that safely. You’re changing generations of opportunity. You’re not only filling a local gap, you’re creating these small business owners, you’re changing the opportunities for their kids. So we need to look at friends, family and neighbor programs and how we actually develop that and that support system. But then we also need to invest in a big way. When you talked about the child tax credit, that was the number one most effective thing that congress has done to reduce childhood poverty, so we need to make sure that that is permanent. They just cut a bunch of taxes for the most wealthy individuals on the backs of working families. We need to make sure we’re investing in regular people and [the child tax credit] would help families address rising costs, it would help them address childcare costs. And then I think we could get into what we’ve done in Colorado through taxes, and I think that we could do this as well. You would qualify universally to help with some assistance, so you could have a match at the federal level, for example, to help people in the most vulnerable time when their family is the most likely to struggle financially and when it is the most expensive to support your needs to get your kid in a safe place and then you being able to actually go into the workforce. Tahra Hoops: You mentioned the one big beautiful bill, which, I still can’t get over that name, but I really do find it shocking that it was just like a reverse robin hood, like you just cut our social saf

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About

The Rebuild is about making blue cities and states better and less expensive: tackling high costs, fixing broken processes, and proving that Democrats can deliver. Sign up to get solutions. www.therebuild.pub

Information

  • Creator
    Chamber of Progress
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Chamber of Progress
  • Show Website
    The Rebuild Conversations

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