Chad Maisel: President Trump calls the affordability issue a scam. I mean, you look at the data—not just from the election, but in terms of how people are experiencing their day-to-day lives—and it is patently not a scam. It is how people are feeling.
Colin Seeberger: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Colin Seeberger. That was Chad Maisel, senior fellow for Economic Policy here at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
We’ve talked a lot about the affordability crisis throughout 2025, and at the top of the list of issues stressing out family budgets is, of course, the cost of housing. That’s why the Center for American Progress recently released a plan detailing how the federal government can help reduce housing costs by driving up production, providing critical relief to both owners and renters.
Chad, one of the co-authors of the plan, helped me break down what’s actually driving this housing crisis and what’s CAP’s plan to fix it. Chad and I also discussed competing theories about how to tackle the housing affordability crisis, as well as what we should expect from Congress’ vote on health care subsidies later this week.
And stick around after the interview for a moment of joy because folks, Mariah Carey—she’s officially thawed out. She’s no longer frozen. And we’ve got to talk the holidays.
Seeberger: Chad Maisel is a senior fellow on the Economic Policy team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. He previously served as special assistant on the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Biden administration and was chief economic policy adviser to Sen. Cory Booker (D) of New Jersey. He’s also a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a visiting fellow at Groundwork Collaborative.
Chad Maisel, welcome to the pod.
Maisel: Thrilled to be here.
Seeberger: So it’s not lost on, I think, any of us, but I think most of the American people, that affordability really is top of mind for most folks in the country.
The press talks about it all the time. We’ve talked about it a lot here on “The Tent.” We see candidates talking about it. A major focus of that affordability conversation has really centered on housing, given the fact that it is the largest expense for most folks in their monthly budget.
And we’ve also seen the cost of housing just explode over the course of the last five years in particular, but really 10, 15 years, ever since the Great Recession. Why is housing so expensive?
Maisel: Right. So that’s the question. So, I mean, first maybe I’ll zoom out and just provide a little data on what we’re talking about here in terms of high housing costs because it’s really pretty extraordinary—yes, over the last 10 to 15 years, but especially since the pandemic over the last five years or so. And so you’re seeing across the board, rents up about 30 percent. In some markets, 40, 50, 60, 70 percent or more. Housing values—which is of course super important as we think about the dream that many people have of owning their own home—also skyrocketing, up 50, 60 percent in many markets.
And so really across the board, people are feeling the crunch. There’s a map, there’s a chart that I really like to look at because it’s so illustrative of what we’re seeing across the country, and it’s of the Phoenix metro area. And in Phoenix over the last 10 years, if you look at 2015, the rental units that are on the market, 80 percent or so of those rental units were available for less than $1,000 a month. Today, in 2025, it’s less than 5 percent.
So you had this huge stock of affordable units for folks, for families, individuals who need a place to live that has pretty much evaporated now. Wages have gone up at the same time, but not nearly at the same rate to counteract what we’re seeing in terms of the huge loss of affordable units. And again, this is not novel or unique. We’re seeing that dynamic across the country.
And so, you asked why is this happening? Why are housing costs so high? And there’s many reasons for this, but the biggest is that we’re simply not building enough housing. We have a lack of supply, a significant lack of supply, in this country.
For the last decade or so, we’ve built about 1.2 million units each year. And what most experts point to, including us here at CAP, we really need between 1.6 and 2 million units a year. So we have this huge deficit that’s building year after year after year that was especially acute immediately following the Great Recession.
So now we’re short a couple million, at least, units, and that results in high competition for the limited units that are available, and therefore much higher costs.
Seeberger: Well, while we have seen this spike in housing prices over the course of the past few years, this isn’t a new phenomenon, right? Housing has been expensive for a long time.
Why is it that despite the fact that it impacts people, like you were saying, in every part of the country, red state, blue state, urban, rural—we are seeing this shortage tighten the squeeze on families. Why is it that we haven’t seen the policy action actually moving at the federal level? Why have states been slow to move on housing? If you could provide some insight there, that’d be great.
Maisel: Yeah. So a couple things. First, yes, housing is often household’s largest expense. Has been for a long time. We really have seen really significant acceleration of housing cost growth over the last 5, 10, 15 years, in particular since the pandemic. There was all sorts of people moving, wanting more space, and putting a particular strain on the limited housing supply. So that’s one. While it’s not new, it’s a particularly acute challenge of late.
And in terms of federal action, which is really the focus of the report that we recently put out here at CAP, when it comes to the federal response, the challenge is that we have very limited tools to accelerate housing supply. The federal government can provide financing, can invest in workforce, which is essential for housing construction, can do what it can to avoid unforced errors on increasing the cost of certain inputs like lumber and gypsum and otherwise things that are really important for housing construction—something that this president has really gone in the opposite direction on.
But when it comes to a lot of the tools that can stand in the way or can accelerate housing construction, those are really happening at the state and primarily the local level. And so what we’ve seen over the last several years is the federal government trying to be increasingly creative in terms of the tools and levers that it has to try to incentivize or encourage state and local action, but really being pretty limited in its ability to do that.
Seeberger: Speaking of this plan that the Center for American Progress—which I know you’re a co-author of—recently released, exploring some of the ways that the federal government can help drive down housing prices, can you break it down for our listeners?
Tell us a little bit more about how you think it actually gets us closer to solving the supply problem that you talked about, while also at the same time providing support to both renters and owners alike.
Maisel: Sure. So I’ll talk about the four big components of the plan, and then maybe I’ll dig in a little deeper into two of my favorite elements and elements that I think pose particular promise in terms of advancing our goals here.
The first thing I’ll say before getting into the actual policies is that this particular report is really focused on housing supply. As I said, we see housing supply as absolutely essential to reversing the current trends and doing more on if we’re serious about lowering housing costs.
That said, there are a number of challenges around housing affordability that we need to address: rental assistance for the lowest-income households, which the Trump administration is going in the exact opposite direction, proposing ending and significantly changing those programs; the punitive focus on homelessness that the Trump administration has taken, which is not in accordance with what all the evidence suggests would have an impact on people experiencing homelessness; and so on and so forth.
So there’s a number of interventions that we know we need to do that happen not to be the focus of this particular report but will be the subject of future CAP research and investigation.
So on the report that we released just a couple weeks ago, it really has four key components. One, a new program called the Rent Relief for Reform program that would help incentivize and otherwise encourage localities, cities, communities across the country to break down needless barriers to housing construction and build more housing, and therefore lower housing costs. That’s one.
Two, seeding and scaling financing for localities and states so that they can build more housing.
Three, investing in innovation, factory-built housing, manufactured housing that we know can be provided at cheaper cost and more quickly, therefore bringing more units and more affordable units onto the market more quickly.
And the fourth is really looking at a host of executive actions that this administration could take tomorrow that would lower costs for renters and homeowners and home buyers alike.
OK, so that’s kind of the roadmap. I’ll talk about a couple of the programs that I think have particular promise and are more novel.
So the first is the Rent Relief for Reform program. So as I said before, there’s a real challenge when it comes to housing supply, especially if you’re looking at it from a federal perspective, in that we really have limited tools in changing how a particular city or community thinks about the rules governing housing production, and in particular looking at zoning and land use rules.
So in 75 percent of cities across the country, 75 percent of land in those cities, it’s illegal to build anything besides a single-family home. So it’s really, really difficult, if not impossible, to build these more dense, smaller, more affordable units that provide entryways into homeownership and for more affordable rents for folks.
And these are, in addition to limits that restrict a single family, we’re talking about parking requirements, height restrictions, amount of distance you need from the curb that the housing can be built from, and so on and so forth. So these are all these rules that vary city by city, state by state.
And so this question that a lot of policy makers are thinking about these days is how do we encourage cities to do what we need them to do to build more housing and therefore lower costs? And so there’s a lot of innovation here.
There’s a bill that recently passed the Senate, and unfortunately it seems stalled in the house, it’s called the Road to Housing Act. And what that does is it provides an innovation fund, which would provide grants directly to communities to build more housing. And they’re taking pro-housing steps in their states and in their communities. So that’s one approach that’s been taken.
We take a slightly different tact, although we support efforts like that one in the Road to Housing. The Rent Relief for Reform provides what we call a carrot, an incentive, to communities, but instead of providing the grant directly to the communities, we instead flip it on its head and we provide that grant directly to renter households.
Here’s how it would work: If a community builds a certain amount of housing, meets a certain quantifiable threshold in terms of permits approved, not only would the community benefit in the form of the natural housing supply and demand, where we would see housing costs go down because we’re seeing more units come online—
Seeberger: Yeah, more construction.
Maisel: —more construction—but we have this challenge in those cases where it takes a while for that impact to be felt. You can’t build a housing unit overnight, and so it takes multiple years.
And so what we do is if that community builds sufficient housing, meets that metric, meets that goal, then we cut rent relief payment checks directly to renter households in those communities to meet their short-term rent-burden needs and the challenges they’re facing paying rent. And the idea is it’s like a down payment on the impact of housing production so that folks are feeling the impact right away and helping them cover rent in the short term.
Seeberger: And the thinking is that some of these local politicians who may have stood in the way of reform in the past are incentivized to change their position because providing rent relief to folks in this high-cost environment is just something politically that they can’t stand in the way of.
Maisel: And so it totally shifts the political economy at the local level of housing production. So when you think about what happens at the local level now, when a city is considering a big zoning change, allowing duplexes in certain neighborhoods or changing parking restrictions, the people that show up in those meetings are approximately the same people in every community. It’s a very small subset of incumbent homeowners who are overwhelmingly opposed to housing production. Any changes. They’re worried about neighborhood character, they’re worried about more traffic, they’re worried about strained infrastructure, and so on and so forth.
This is the quote-unquote “NIMBY” dynamic at play. Renters—the people who would be most poised to gain in the form of lower costs, if in fact more building were to move forward, are entirely absent from these discussions.
And so the idea is by giving them some skin in the game, by giving policymakers, decision-makers at the local level, a little more political cover where if they reject a particular zoning change, land use change, don’t do what they can to help more deals pencil out, they’ve got some heat where they’re not just responsible for listening to these incumbent homeowners, but really all of their constituents, many of whom would really lose out in the form of hundreds or thousands of dollars in these rent relief payments.
And then the final thing I’ll say on this is, which I think is an important element, is we have the carrot, where we’re providing these rent relief payments to communities, but we are also imposing a stick. And if communities do not take action, do not move the ball forward, are not building more housing, they would lose access to certain discretionary grant programs.
The federal government spends billions of dollars every year on grants for infrastructure, for transportation, for mainstreet revitalization. These are highly sought after, super oversubscribed grants, and we believe that taxpayers shouldn’t be spending money subsidizing communities that are not investing in their own growth and the opportunity for housing supply that comes with building more housing.
Seeberger: I was really intrigued by the manufacturing pipeline housing that you were talking about. I was really curious about that because I think for a lot of homeowners, yeah, it’s the high mortgage payment. Yeah, it’s that down payment, being able to get your foot in the door. But it’s also these unexpected maintenance costs, too, that I think for a lot of folks—especially after the pandemic, we saw the supply chain problems and whatnot—are, I think, for a lot of folks a real strain because they can’t plan for them as much.
Is the thinking that some of this construction may be yielding higher-quality units that may have fewer construction problems and therefore also being able to help save people on the back end with maintenance costs as well?
Maisel: Sure. It’s a good segue to the second part of our plan, which is really focused on innovation and housing construction.
And when you look across the economy, there’s been incredible gains in productivity over the last 10, 20, 30, 50, 75 years. When you look at health care, when you look at agriculture, how we do those things today are so, so different than what it was like 50 years ago. And the result is much lower costs.
Housing is the exception. There have been virtually no gains in productivity over the last 50 plus years. We’re still building using the same materials. We’re on site, same processes, same technology, and so on and so forth.
And what we aim to do with our report, and what a lot of people in this space are starting to think about, is how do we jumpstart innovation in housing construction, in housing production? How do we look at new materials? How do we look at new processes? What can we do in factories and in creating these high-quality, durable, energy efficient, modular, panelized homes, where part or all of the unit is built in a factory and then constructed, in some cases, on the lot?
And we see real promise in terms of lower costs, but also speeding up the construction of these, which is a big cost driver as well. And it’s such an important contrast to what the Trump administration is doing right now, which is just taking really reckless action that’s driving up costs.
So you look at tariffs, for example, which our analysis and others points to adding thousands, $10,000 or $15,000 in cost to the construction of a single unit. That’ll have real implications in the appetite of builders to continue building housing in the long run. You think about President Trump’s 50-year mortgage proposal, which we see as actively bad and would significantly drive up costs for consumers.
What this plan seeks to do is really invest in the aspirational but commonsense investments that would really reenvision what housing looks like over the next 10, 20, 50 years. And one of the flagship proposals here is what we call ARPA Home, Advanced Research Projects Agency. So this is something that’s been pioneered at the defense department. It’s called DARPA with defense products. We also have ARPA-H with health products, ARPA-E with energy.
This would propose expanding it to the housing space, where we make big bet investments at universities, with companies, and other entities to seed and scale and test new technologies, new processes, particularly around modular and other factory-built housing that we think has huge potential to accelerate housing production times and also lower costs.
Seeberger: You brought up President Trump’s 50-year mortgage idea. You said that it was bad for consumers.
Seeberger: That’s not the only change that we’ve seen from this administration as it relates to housing. I know the Center for American Progress earlier this year put out an analysis on how the big ugly bill is going to drive up housing costs by about $11,000 for a home mortgage for the typical buyer because of higher interest rates resulting from the debt-financed bill.
But you mentioned some of the cuts to renter support. Given the fact that housing is such a top priority for the American people, why do you think that we’re seeing the administration go in the opposite direction? And two, what is it about that 50-year mortgage idea that is so bad?
Seeberger: I’m sure it probably would work out quite well, if you’re a bank.
Maisel: Sure. Right. A lot of interest coming their way.
Maisel: Yeah. So it’s really confusing and quite puzzling. We had a president who ran on making everything better for folks, and here he’s taken what is arguably the biggest pain point when it comes to the affordability crisis, and he’s made it much, much worse.
And so I talked about tariffs. We know that has a huge impact on costs. We’ve seen impact of his immigration policies on workforce, which is another huge challenge where we’ve seen really a long time coming big shortages in housing construction workforce, which we need to really reverse and invest in if we’re going to make real progress here.
You talked about the 50-year mortgage, which is really an exceptionally bad policy. My colleague here at CAP and former White House econ adviser, Jared Bernstein, has written on this as well. And really what it would do, for those who don’t know, is you take your traditional 30-year mortgage and instead it’s a 50-year. So you’re spreading these payments out over 20 additional years.
And so I think what was appealing to whoever pitched this to President Trump—and maybe President Trump, at first glance, without thinking very much about it—is, oh, you’ve spread these payments out over more a longer period of time. That will lower that monthly payment. And the problem is it really doesn’t pan out.
So, one, we would see by all accounts interest payments would balloon. So you’d see an additional $400,000 or $500,000 in interest payments over the course of that loan compared, to a 30-year mortgage.
Seeberger: That’s for a typical home buyer?
Maisel: That’s for a median home.
Maisel: OK. So like $400,000 or $500,000.
Seeberger: That’s like the value of the home.
Maisel: Totally. More. More.
Maisel: And then you get at the central premise of this thing, which is that the monthly payments at least will be lower, right? Your monthly payment, instead of being $1,500, will be $1,300, or whatever it may be.
But that’s based on an assumption, which almost no one thinks is true, which is that interest rates would stay the same. By all accounts, lenders would not keep interest rates the same for a 50-year mortgage as they would for a 30-year mortgage. It’s simply more exposure to default and otherwise expose that lender to risk.
So we would expect rent interest rates to actually go up for that 50-year product. Therefore, even by the measure that the Trump administration is pushing this thing based on would really not pan out. I think the monthly payments would be the same or potentially even more than they would be under a 30-year product.
Seeberger: Interesting. We talked about housing supply. There’s been a lot of talk recently about this notion of “abundance.” Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, they wrote a whole book on it. In it, they talk about affordable housing and how overregulation has stymied the development of production.
What did your reading of Abundance, what did the theory get right about the problems that we have in housing? Where do you see that it may fall short in actually addressing the whole issue?
Maisel: I think the book Abundance was extraordinarily powerful and important in pointing the way towards a more rigorous and impactful housing policy at the federal, state, and local level.
I think pointing to the need to build more housing and pointing to a lot of the blockages and veto points that exist along the way of building more housing is extremely important. And for a long time, unfortunately, it wasn’t getting the attention from policymakers that it demands. So that’s, I think, front and center.
And I don’t think Ezra Klein and Jerry Thompson purport that this is the answer to all of our problems, but it’s not the answer to all of our problems, right? So when it comes to housing supply, yes, we need to take on needless barriers to housing production and all these veto points along the process, but we need a better strategy on financing to help more of these housing deals pencil out at the state and local level. That’s why we propose in our CAP plan really seeding and scaling models that work on the financing side.
We need to lower costs on inputs, which as I said, the tariffs are going in the exact opposite direction, adding lots of costs. Invest in workforce. Invest in productivity. So as with anything in policy, it’s a multifaceted problem, and it requires a multifaceted response.
Seeberger: You’re an economic policy expert. We talked a lot about housing. But this notion of affordability, the president has been out there recently and he has been calling it a democratic “con job.” It’s a scam. I’m curious to get your take.
Is affordability a scam like the president says? But also, how else besides housing, how else would you be advising policymakers at the federal level? What should they be doing to help lower costs for the American people? Because it’s not just housing. It’s a whole suite of essentials, right? And just the basics seem really out of reach for a lot of folks.
Maisel: Right? I think as a political matter, starting, and then we can talk policy, which of course is central here—but as a political matter, we see that what President Trump is selling, people aren’t really buying.
You look at the elections in November last month, and Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) ran on an affordability platform talking about the high cost of good—housing, yes, child care, yes, health care, and so on and so forth. So people seem to like that, right? Because it speaks to the challenges that they are facing.
President Trump calls the affordability issue a scam. I mean, you look at the data and you look at not just from the election, but in terms of how people are experiencing their day-to-day lives, and it is patently not a scam. It is how people are feeling.
And so I think a relentless focus on these issues. We talked about housing supply and housing affordability. I think that is central. I will say, a lot of these issues around housing supply, it takes a while to build more housing and to manifest in terms of lower costs for folks. And so that’s why I think our proposal focused on pairing that short-term relief with housing supply investments is really important.
These people are struggling now, and they can’t afford to wait 3, 5, 8, 10 years for more housing units to come on board and their rent to finally moderate or go down or to buy that first home. Similarly, child care, where the president has been totally absent on, this is a huge pain point. People spending $1,500 or $2,000 a month, in many cases more in many high-cost cities.
The president just jammed through this gigantic, quote-unquote, “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and it just failed—with trifecta, needless to say—and failed to take on so many of the biggest pain points that people are experiencing in their lives, whether it’s health care, whether it’s child care, whether it’s housing. And that’s made them worse.
Seeberger: Made worse, Chad. I mean, we’re seeing electricity costs, they’re going to go up $120. I mentioned mortgage costs go up. Borrowing costs go up $11,000 for the typical 30-year mortgage. Not to mention the fact that they extend all these expiring tax cuts for billionaires. The folks who need to get their insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, they are happy to let their premiums double. Because they refuse to act to extend those enhanced subsidies.
Maisel: And think about what a wasted opportunity that was.
Maisel: Where they’ve spent $1 trillion, $2 trillion on tax credits, on other tax incentives that went overwhelmingly, of course, to the wealthiest folks, the wealthiest corporations, and what that could have meant in terms of addressing the core challenges that people are facing across these areas that we’ve been talking about.
It’s just quite sad, honestly, because the whole point of policy and politics is to impact people’s lives. And we just saw this big bill rammed through, and I think, as you noted, not only will it not help these people, I think there’s a decent chance it actually makes things a lot worse.
Seeberger: Just to build off of that, we saw the government was shut down until about a month ago. As part of the deal to reopen the government, the Senate got a guarantee to bring up a bill to extend these enhanced premium tax credits to help prevent people from seeing their premiums necessarily skyrocket.
As we turn the calendar to next year, all the signs seem to indicate that the Republicans are going to block this thing. This week I think I’ve seen maybe 4, 5, 6 different “concepts of a plan” from various folks on the Republican side of the aisle on Capitol Hill.
What do you think the message is that they’re sending to folks at the same time they are putting forward these half-baked ideas that don’t actually do anything to tackle these affordability challenges, at the same time that they’re voting against extending these premium tax credits? It seems to me like this is really showing an ignorance to people’s real-life experiences.
Maisel: It seems like it’s really a repeat of what we saw with the last Trump administration, where there’s this frantic flailing around. They recognize, but very late in the game, that, “Oh, health care is actually a problem for many people, and health care cost is a real problem for people. We really ought to do something about it.” But they don’t really know how because health care policy is hard.
And so instead of spending the time building out something that is workable and would actually be effective in lowering costs, they, as you note, it’s this free for all where over the course of a couple weeks, policymakers are supposed to think up something new that will reshape a huge sector of the American economy.
Seeberger: Just wave a magic wand, Chad.
Maisel: So easy, I mean, but it speaks to this lack of prioritization of some of these issues. We talked about President Trump calling it a scam. If this was front and center for the president, as some of these more pet projects seem to be for him—
Seeberger: Oh, like the ballroom?
Maisel: Like the ballroom. There’s no way that he’s not looking over every detail of that thing and making sure it is done right, according to his specifications.
Maisel: If there was that same level of rigor around health care, around housing, around child care, I think we’d see a lot different results.
Seeberger: No doubt. No doubt. Well, we’ll see how his sales pitch goes to voters in Pennsylvania. We’re recording this episode on Tuesday. He is heading there today to go lay out his case for how he’s delivering on the economy and the cost of living. We’ll see how that goes.
We like to end these interviews on a positive note when we can.
Seeberger: So Chad, what is making you optimistic, hopeful, in this moment that we are facing a lot of challenges, a lot of headwinds with this administration, but maybe as we’re looking forward to a new year, new opportunities, what’s your case?
Maisel: Sure. I’ll dig deep for this. No, but I think on the housing side, we’re seeing a lot more serious action at the state and local level to seriously reverse what’s been years of stagnant housing production and really start to build more. And we’re seeing the impacts of those policies in terms of housing costs.
So over the last several years, there’s a number of cities that have set up new financing products that really are successful in bringing more units online at lower costs. We’re seeing cities really take serious changes to their zoning codes and land use requirements.
Seeberger: I was just in Austin, Texas, so I can verify. Down in Austin—
Maisel: There’s a lot of housing.
Seeberger: It is possible.
Maisel: It’s possible. Minneapolis increased their housing stock by about 12 percent between, I think it was, 2017 and 2022, and rents went up 1 percent over that period.
Maisel: While the surrounding area where they weren’t building more housing went way, way up. So we see this relationship between building more housing and lower housing costs. And cities just can’t afford to ignore it anymore. I mean, it’s such a pain point for people. And so local leaders are starting to recognize that and take action.
We saw a big bill come through in California earlier this year, which is really encouraging because obviously California appears to be ground zero of the housing affordability challenges across the country.
And so what I’m hopeful for in this coming year is that cities and states, they look around, they see what’s working, and they learn from each other, and they do more of it.
Seeberger: Chad Maisel, that is an optimistic note for me. I think that one does it. Thanks so much for joining us on “The Tent.” It was great to chat with you.
Seeberger: All right, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week. Please go back and check out previous episodes. The holidays are here. Mariah Carey, as I said, has officially thawed out. She is defrosted. You can’t walk into a store and not hear her beautiful holiday track.
So to break down what are the holiday highlights for “The Tent” team, I’ve got supervising producer Kelly McCoy here.
Kelly McCoy: All I want for Christmas is you, Colin.
Seeberger: I know that’s right.
Seeberger: Ho, ho ho. I don’t know about you, but I have some annual cooking traditions.
Seeberger: So I make meatballs for my neighbors every single year. I was in the kitchen basically all weekend long.
Seeberger: And made my deliveries on Sunday with my family.
McCoy: Wow, you must be a popular neighbor, Colin.
Seeberger: I do what I can. I do what I can. Giving back.
Seeberger: But I don’t just like to cook. I like to bake. I’m not usually a baker.
Seeberger: But around the holidays, those peanut butter cookies with the Hershey kiss on top?
McCoy: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Seeberger: Like, oh my God.
Seeberger: What are they called? Black-eyed Susans?
Seeberger: Something like that.
Seeberger: We celebrate Christmas. For Christmas dinner, usually do some sort of surf and turf combo.
Seeberger: So I think we may be doing some steaks and lobster tails.
Seeberger: Or something this year.
McCoy: Yum, yum, yum, yum.
Seeberger: So yeah, what’s on your menu?
McCoy: I feel like this holiday, food is significantly better than the Thanksgiving holiday food, which we talked about a few weeks ago.
McCoy: Yeah. So my family, every year on Christmas Eve, we do a short rib butternut squash risotto that is out of control. My cholesterol and heart rate are already elevated just thinking about it.
McCoy: But it is so damn good. Pair that with a nice Cabernet Sauvignon, yum. And then the on Christmas, we do a beef tenderloin. So we’re just going all in on the meat, on the beef.
Seeberger: Well, your prices are going to be higher this year.
McCoy: I know, I know. This dang Joe Biden economy. But all kidding aside, it is Trump’s economy. Cookie-wise, I feel like—
Seeberger: Do you cook them? Do you bake?
Seeberger: Or are you a consumer?
McCoy: I have largely been a consumer, yeah. But I am trying to be more helpful these years. I wouldn’t go so far to say I’m like a Betty Crocker, but we’re trying.
McCoy: And I feel like you really can’t beat a nice, soft chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven.
McCoy: Such a classic. So we definitely whip some of those up. I am, as no surprise to you, a big chocolate stan.
McCoy: Yeah. So we’ll also do a nice little chocolate cookie with peppermint all crushed up on the top.
Seeberger: So it’s like a peppermint bark cookie almost?
McCoy: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
McCoy: Really, really yummy.
Seeberger: OK, well, I will be waiting for you to bring me some, Kelly.
McCoy: You bring me some—you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, Colin. How about that?
Seeberger: You got it. You got it. Any festive cocktails for folks, or?
McCoy: Everything, except for eggnog. I mean, conceptually, I’m here for it. But when you think about it practically, it kind of scares me.
Seeberger: Yeah, no, it’s a little creepy.
McCoy: Right? So not sure I’ll be hitting the eggnog, but we love a spiked hot chocolate with some peppermint schnapps or vodka in there. That is nice and cozy.
And I also want to experiment with some sort of peppermint espresso martini. I feel like there’s something there. Love a little upper and downer at the same time.
Seeberger: Yeah. I have been a fan of the cranberry margarita.
Seeberger: So you take the cranberries, the whole cranberries, dust them with like sugar. And it looks extremely festive. A little rosemary or something.
Seeberger: Looks amazing.
Seeberger: And I’ve got to say, it does not disappoint. So folks, you have your recommendations for the rest of this month. Go crazy. Have a great time. Be safe. Have a wonderful holiday. And we’ll talk to you next week.
Seeberger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Colin Seeberger. Muggs Leone is our digital producer, Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, and Mishka Espey is our booking producer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can invite us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.