Transcript:
[Soundbite begins]
Jake Auchincloss: We have to have an agenda for financial freedom. It has to be center to what we’re talking about. And yet—and this is really critical—people will not hear your ideas if they feel judged. And so, it’s not that economics and affordability isn’t the central issue. It is. It’s that in order to have that conversation, we have to stop condescending. We have to stop acting as though we know what’s best.
[Soundbite ends]
Colin Seeberger: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m your host, Colin Seeberger. That was Massachusetts Congressman Jake Auchincloss (D).
As we head into week five of the government shutdown, more and more Americans are concerned about how the lapse in funding could impact their lives. Over the weekend, the United States Department of Agriculture announced it is choosing to not use emergency money to cover food stamps, which would leave tens of millions of Americans at risk of seeing their food assistance ripped away by the end of this week. This is, of course, on top of Republican efforts to defund food assistance programs all throughout this year, including making the largest cut to SNAP [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] in American history as part of Republican’s big ugly budget bill.
Jake and I also broke down the cost-of-living crisis and what Democrats need to focus on to regain the public’s trust. And stick around after the interview for a moment of joy, because spooky season is officially upon us.
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Seeberger: Jake Auchincloss represents Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District. He’s a Marine and businessman and currently serves in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Congressman Auchincloss, welcome to the pod.
Auchincloss: Thanks for having me on.
Seeberger: I appreciate you making time. We are entering the fifth week of this ongoing government shutdown. And as I’m sure you know, Republicans continue to refuse to negotiate, even though we are expecting open enrollment to start this weekend. Americans are going to see, like they haven’t yet, just how much their health care premiums are going to go up because Republicans refuse to extend the premium tax credits.
I am curious about the impact that you’re hearing of the shutdown on your constituents. Are they concerned about their health care costs going up? What all is the impact that you’re hearing on the ground?
Auchincloss: The SNAP cuts are going to make this shutdown personal to a lot of my constituents. About a million Bay Staters take SNAP benefits. The president has called it a “Democrat program.” It’s not. It’s a program for children. Two-thirds of the recipients of SNAP are families with children. Kids rely on this program to go to school with a full stomach, and these cuts are going to cause pain.
Seeberger: Yeah, no doubt. And we also know that this is not the first time that Republicans have tried to rip food assistance away from working-class people. Like you say, these are the most vulnerable people in our country. And we saw it in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” as they call it, cutting SNAP by nearly $200 billion—the largest cut in American history.
What do you make of the fact that this administration is choosing not to use the emergency funding it has in order to keep SNAP benefits flowing into November? This is Thanksgiving month, for Christ’s sake.
Auchincloss: Because the pain is the point. And Democrats need to contest that type of callousness and cruelty.
We also need to propose our own big and bold ideas for how we are going to provide a social safety net for Americans. Let me give you an example: Over the course of the next two and a half years, virtually every state in the union is going to negotiate Medicaid waivers with this administration.
For our listeners, Medicaid is a federal-state partnership where the federal government funds a lot of it, but the states govern most of it, and then they negotiate a lot of the rules. And every five years, states have to go back to Washington and ask for what’s called a waiver, or technically a Section 1115 demonstration, where they get to negotiate a new set of parameters for how this program gets run.
This upcoming negotiation needs to be categorically different than the previous negotiations, because we’re not dealing with a status quo anymore. So, in Massachusetts, for example, I’ve encouraged the state to take on more risk in terms of owning more of the outcomes associated with the Medicaid dollars. But in return, getting the ability to braid together federal resources, Medicaid, LIHEAP—which is the home heating benefit—SNAP, which, as we discussed, is food stamps. Getting to braid together those federal benefits to have a bigger impact for children.
Because fundamentally, if you could just make children the center, the locus, of these dollars and you weren’t encumbered by all the red tape that the Trump administration has put around these programs, you could really build a social security for children where you could make these dollars have real impact for children’s well-being, food, housing, heating, and really the basics for them to thrive.
Seeberger: I was really excited to chat with you, because I think you are articulating for Democrats, for the Democratic Party, not just a response to the moment we find ourselves in of the Trump administration trying to burn everything down—and I think Democrats instinctively and understandably getting caught up and bogged down in expressing outrage about what this administration is doing—but also really leaning into and articulating an alternative vision for the big ideas that are going to rally people back to the Democratic party.
I listened to an interview that you did recently with Derek Thompson on a big idea that you had around the digital dopamine tax and taking on some of the big tech company abuses. But I’m curious: What ideas do you think that Democrats really need to focus on in order to reconnect with a majority of Americans?
Auchincloss: The cornerstone needs to be financial freedom. And there are three parts of financial freedom, to me.
First is treating “cost disease.” And we should dig into that, but cost disease is when prices are outpacing wages in a certain sector year over year. And housing and health care are the two sectors of American life most afflicted with cost disease. Democrats should be doctors of cost disease. That’s part one.
Part two is reducing the federal debt. And I don’t think Democrats should flinch from that policy driver. Traditionally, progressives have thought that if you talk about the federal debt, that must mean that you want to deprive Americans of important programs or entitlements. The last president to balance the budget was a Democrat. And the next president to balance the budget, the next president to get a handle on the debt, should be a Democrat too. It’s critical for our nation’s well-being and for controlling inflation that we put downward pressure on $35 trillion of debt that we’re going to hand to the next generation.
And then part three is retirement security. We’ve got to save Social Security. We have to give Americans more of an ownership stake in future growth in this economy. And we have to resuscitate the defined benefit, which was really a hallmark of 20th century economic security that’s been eroded. And we’ve got to bring that back through annuities and through life insurance and other mechanisms that give Americans that sense of economic security into their elder age.
Those three elements—treating cost disease in housing and health care, reducing the debt so that we can reduce inflation, and saving Social Security and the three-legged stool of retirement security—those are the three pillars of financial freedom. And that is a unifying issue. Because financial freedom is really the hallmark of the middle class. That is what people associate with the middle class.
We would be wrong as a party to define the middle class as, “oh, you need a college degree to be in the middle class, or you need a certain temperament or a certain type of homeownership.” No. What the middle class really, to me, speaks to is the financial freedom to give your kids a good shot in life.
Seeberger: You talked about the cost disease, and I think rightly, obviously, pointed to just how much housing costs, health care costs, are squeezing people. What would you propose if, say, you were chairman of a powerful committee in Congress or President Auchincloss.
What would you advise the party to be prioritizing to make a tangible difference on those fronts as quickly as possible?
Auchincloss: Build 5 million units of housing over the next five years. Build 50 gigawatts of clean energy over the next decade. At the core of the expense and utilities in housing is a supply problem. We have undersupplied these core social goods, and it’s driven up the price. And it’s not academic.
I mean, you see this happen in Austin, Texas; in Cambridge, Massachusetts; in parts of California. Where they have built more housing rapidly, rents have plummeted. And they’ve plummeted the fastest for the lowest-income quintiles. Building more housing works. But we need to have a federal, state, local set of projects to make it happen faster.
I’ve talked about building new cities from scratch, actually. I’ve talked about tying low-income housing tax credits to zoning and land use reforms. There’s an upcoming bipartisan Senate bill called “The Road to Housing” that Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren (D-MA) and Sen. [Tim] Scott (R-SC) worked on together that’s got a lot of good policies. I think there are some additions we could make in the House.
But we need to make homeownership and the ability to afford a home attainable for the Millennial generation, or else the Millennial generation is never going to feel like they’ve got a foothold into the middle class. And the complement to just expanding production of housing is also enabling mass production of housing.
Let me give you an analogy: Imagine you built your car the way that you built your house—which is to say, you stood in your driveway, and you called up a general contractor, and your general contractor came to the driveway. And then, he gave you a quote on a bunch of different elements of the car. And then, he hired a bunch of subcontractors, and they all came and they built your car in your driveway piece by piece. How much do you think your car would cost?
Seeberger: Probably $50,000?
Auchincloss: Your car would cost multiples of what it costs when it’s factory built. Because the key to lowering the cost of a product is to mass produce it. This is called Wright’s Law. And Wright’s Law is the cure for cost disease.
If you want to make something cheap, you take a service that’s expensive, you turn it into a product, and then you mass produce the product at scale. And so, we need the Henry Ford for housing, where you can mass produce modular and manufactured housing to radically drive down the cost of the component parts to it or even the entire unit.
Because cars are actually just as economically complex as housing. It’s just that cars are built in factories, and housing is built stick by stick.
Seeberger: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I’m curious, separate and apart from a lot of the kind of policy iteration that the party is doing right now, I think that there are also real questions about what changes the party needs to make, culturally and politically, in order to connect with a majority of Americans. On this front, I think that there’s been a lot of ink spilled on Democrats needing to gain back the support that’s been lost among, particularly, young men in this country. I think we saw that quite noticeably in the last election.
Besides just going to the spaces that young men are getting their information—whether it’s podcasts or sporting events, as the president has done quite famously, whether it’s UFC fights or others—how can Democrats win back the support of young men?
Auchincloss: Stop condescending and start building. The party has had a pattern of talking down to young men. And I don’t think we want to patronize them, and I don’t think we want to “meet them where they’re at.” Young men are looking for a mission. We should be telling them where they can go, not meeting them where they’re at.
And that means a project to build America. Again, we’ve got to build, as I said, 5 million homes. We’ve got to build gigawatts of clean energy. We’ve got to build more ships than the Chinese Navy. I want to start more small businesses per 1,000 people than any other jurisdiction in the world. Right now, the leader is Hong Kong. The Chinese Communist Party should not be more entrepreneurial than Americans are.
And we should be enlisting young men in this national project, including by building out 1,000 trade schools to give them the skills and confidence necessary for that kind of in-real-life sweating and striving.
Right now, they’re being routed by social media, corporations, and online gambling corporations towards a cheap, ephemeral form of digital dopamine, where everything is fast and easy and alone. It’s not good for them. It’s not good for them in the job market. It’s not good for them in the marriage market.
And I think what they’re looking for is a sense of mission, a sense of challenge, a sense of camaraderie and teamwork. We shouldn’t prescribe exactly what team they should join. It can be Electrical Workers 103. It can be 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. It can be the church softball league. But we do want young men in teams, in real life, doing stuff together as opposed to behind their keyboards online.
Seeberger: Yeah. I think that would resonate with a lot of young men that I know. I also wanted to get into—you are doing a lot of really exciting work right now focused on building back support among a majority of Americans for the Democratic Party right now. And part of that work has taken the form of a new organization that you are leading called Majority Democrats. Can you tell our listeners about the organization, its work, and what you’re hoping to accomplish?
Auchincloss: Majority Democrats seeks to be the vanguard reinventing the Democratic Party ahead of 2028, which will be the first open presidential primary in 30 years—really, since ‘92.
It’s starting with 32 elected officials, members of Congress, some governors-to-be, including [Abigail] Spanberger and [Mikie] Sherrill, and, importantly, a lot of state House leaders and mayors, who at a time when Washington has been captured by MAGA, are the ones who are delivering for their constituents and showing what Democrats can do on education, on housing, on law and order—on issues that if we can govern and deliver on, we can earn a voter’s trust on.
And so, we are trying to fuse together ideas—ideas that are heterodox—that are going to challenge perceived wisdom in both parties. We’re going to fuse that with talent and with the courage to disrupt the status quo to be able to create a platform that is resonant with a majority of Americans.
Seeberger: Well, speaking of where a majority of Americans are and being unafraid to lean into a direction that’s going to generate support among the majority of the electorate, I’m curious to ask you about one of the biggest issues that Democrats have been unpacking from the Biden administration and this last election: of course, the issue of immigration.
And last week—you may have seen the clip yourself—Sen. [Bernie] Sanders (D-VT) was doing an interview on “The Tim Dillon Show,” and he was asked about the issue of border security, of immigration. And he actually said that Trump has done a better job of securing the border than Biden did. And it seemed to really be carving out a pivot relative to where he was personally throughout the 2020 Democratic primary—but also, really, I think signaling to many of his supporters on the far left that the party’s direction over the course of the last several years has really gotten out of bounds.
I’m curious on whether you caught that interview, how you internalized the senator’s remarks or my sharing them right now, and where you think the party should be focused on border security and immigration?
Auchincloss: The opportunity in front of us going into ‘28 is to define a new center. The electorate has realigned since 2016. And when there is a realigned electorate, it is not just an opportunity but an imperative for the party that is challenging to define what a new center means. Because if you can define what the center means in terms of political debate, you then control the terms of that debate.
And what Democrats have done so poorly over the last decade is control the terms of debate. And when we address immigration, I think what we need to recognize is it needs to be discussed in alignment with law and order. And the reason I say that is, by double digits, Americans will say that immigrants contribute to the economy, that they contribute to our culture. This whole concept that we’re in this anti-immigrant moment as a country really isn’t true actually on dimensions of the vitality that immigrants bring to our economy and to our society. Americans are pretty much sold on that.
Where immigration runs against the grain of public opinion is on public safety and law and order. Americans think that increased immigration erodes public safety. And what we have to do is define a new center for this debate where we can acknowledge concerns about lawlessness, about border security, while retaining our identity as a nation of immigrants.
So, what does that mean in practice, moving away from academic points of view here? In practice, what that says is absolutely we should be investing in border security. The Biden administration allowing 5 million people to cross the border over 18 months without documentation was unacceptable. It did put an undue pressure on states’ budgets and on public safety, and we’re going to fix it.
So yes, border security. Yes, we should be funding the police. Absolutely. And by the way, the Republicans just cut cops’ grants this year that allow local law enforcement agencies to hire and train police officers. We want to fund the police. We want them to integrate mental health into their first response, because that’s more effective. We want that to be paired with strong gun safety laws, because that keeps police officers and communities safe. And we want police to be a part of the community rather than a militarized appendage on top of it.
So, we can have border security, we can have strong public safety efforts, that are very much encompassing of we want to be welcoming more immigrants. And I’m a co-lead of a bill called the Dignity Act. It’s a pathway to citizenship for people who have been here, who have come here without documentation, provided that they pay taxes and a fine.
It is more accountability for ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], because this surge of masked ICE agents onto city streets, I think, is alienating Americans. This country did not want to quarter the king’s troops, and they’re not going to want to quarter the president’s troops either. And we should absolutely pull in that libertarian impulse to reject centralized and personalized uses of executive power.
So, this is a way of saying that Democrats can be the law-and-order party, but we’re going to do it by synthesizing a group of policies from across different ideologies that actually work and that make sense to people, as opposed to reflexively going left or right.
Seeberger: It’s really interesting. One thing that I wanted to dive in on, you have talked about, you come from a working-class district. You have talked about pockets of that district that have historically long supported Democrats—in 2024, actually voted for Donald Trump rather than Vice President Harris.
I am curious to get your take: Speaking with these communities, do you see Democrats’ best path to reconnecting with those working-class voters being articulated on the economy? Do you see it being articulated on the president’s corruption? Walk me through the case that you, Congressman Auchincloss, make when you’re talking to those voters.
Auchincloss: Yes. It’s a great question. Holding a part of economy and culture as separate issues and separate dimensions, I think, is not how most voters think about it. Here’s what I mean by that.
When you ask people, what do you care about? And I spend my whole life asking that question, right? I ask it directly. I ask it through intermediaries. I’m so hungry for information about that question, because that way I can put my finger on the pulse of the district.
What they’ll tell you is cost of living. And this is why I emphasize financial freedom. There’s such economic anxiety in this economy that is really suffocating the middle class. About 10 percent of this economy is doing great, and about 90 percent is just anxious all the time. And so of course we have to have an agenda for financial freedom. It has to be center to what we’re talking about.
And yet—and this is really critical—people will not hear your ideas if they feel judged. The human brain, neurologically, literally cannot be afraid and curious at the same time. You can’t have both emotions at the same time. And when people feel judged, it activates the same part of your brain that feels afraid. Being judged and feeling afraid are very, very similar reactions in terms of how you respond. And so, if they feel judged, if they feel condescended to or talked down to or preached at, they literally stop. They cannot be curious. They will not be curious about your ideas.
And so, it’s not that economics and affordability isn’t the central issue. It is. It’s that in order to have that conversation, we have to stop condescending. We have to stop acting as though we know what’s best or that somehow a college degree is the ticket into a debate about what does the good life look like in America. These are things that shut down that debate.
And there’s so many effective candidates who are doing this. Like, that’s the thing. When I think, I look around these majority Democrats—people like Jared Golden, people like Mike Johnston in Denver, Sandra Jauregui in Nevada—there’s so many of these younger elected officials who just intuitively do this. And this is what I mean by talent.
Seeberger: And this may be a perfect segue, then. We’re facing a lot of challenges in the country right now. You got three kiddos. I’m curious, what keeps you hopeful, inspired, for the future you want to build for them?
Auchincloss: Every time I have an in-real-life interaction with people, there is a deep reservoir of commonsense and decency in this country. There’s an exhausted majority of Americans who want to do better than we’re doing right now, who don’t think that every difference of opinion is a difference of principle that necessarily needs to escalate to violence. Right? And yet, if you went online and you listen to the outrage Olympics on social media or cable news, you’d think that our society was incurably tribal.
Social media is poison. It’s just absolute poison for our country. And we all need to touch grass and get out there and talk human to human. I’ve been doing a lot of this over the last few years but particularly this year—talking to Democrats, talking to Republicans, but most of all just trying to do it in real life, or at least in interactions that are creating the same dynamic as in-real-life interactions. But this anonymous, social media, bot-filled slop is going to ruin this democracy.
Seeberger: Well then, on that note, that’s going to do it for us this week. Congressman Jake Auchincloss, thanks so much for joining us on the pod. It was great to chat with you.
Auchincloss: Thanks for having me on.
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Seeberger: All right, folks, that’s going to do it for us this week. Please go back and check out previous episodes.
Excited to have join me to close out this episode our supervising producer, Kelly McCoy—joining us on this Halloween week. How are we feeling in anticipation for the big day?
Kelly McCoy: We’re settling into our spooky season, Colin. Admittedly, Halloween does not fall in my favorite set of holidays.
Seeberger: Same.
McCoy: But I am here for a witty costume. I love the kiddos getting all dressed up.
Seeberger: So cute.
McCoy: Who doesn’t love a reason to eat a lot of chocolate, in my case, or candy for the rest of America? So, we’re not begrudging the fact that Halloween is right around the corner.
Seeberger: OK. Have to know what’s your best Halloween costume of all time, one. And two, favorite candy, least favorite candy. Go.
McCoy: OK, so, man, I’m going to age myself. In 2012, I went as a binder full of women. And that slapped.
Seeberger: Oh, boy.
McCoy: That slapped. And I so desperately miss the 2012 election. For those that aren’t tracking, that was a sweet old Mittens, Mitt Romney, running against Barack Obama in what feels like literally a century ago.
And my favorite candy has got to be a dark chocolate peanut butter cup. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s make their own that are quite good. I believe Reese’s does as well. But any of that type of flavor combo is going to really hit the spot for me.
So how about you?
Seeberger: I love a Reese’s. I especially love all the holiday Reese’s. Around Easter, they come in the shape of an egg or come in the shape of a pumpkin for Halloween or a Christmas tree around Christmas. I don’t know why, but the texture of the chocolate or something, the ratios are just perfect.
I also am going to date myself. My best costume of all time was when I dressed as Cruella de Vil in 2011 for my friend’s Disney-themed Halloween party. And it must’ve been a good outfit, because the heels that I was wearing ruined my friend’s hardwood floors in the apartment that she was renting.
McCoy: Oh, no.
Seeberger: But you know what? She shook it right off and she was like, that was amazing. You killed it. And we, to this day, remain best friends. So, yeah. You know what?
McCoy: It was worth it.
Seeberger: Got to say …
McCoy: I am sad I haven’t seen photos of this, Colin.
Seeberger: They will remain in the vault, but we will see if I one day dust them off.
McCoy: OK. OK.
Seeberger: But for now, they will remain in the vault.
McCoy: Yeah. Favorite candy?
Seeberger: OK, favorite candy. I mean, I do like a Reese’s. Oh man, this is tough. OK. Favorite candy? I love Sour Patch Kids.
McCoy: Good choice.
Seeberger: Sour Patch Kids are amazing.
McCoy: They are.
Seeberger: Favorite chocolate? Oh gosh, this is tough. Also weird, but I really like Butterfinger.
McCoy: That is also an acceptable answer, Colin.
Seeberger: Yeah. Reese’s, Butterfinger, I feel like these kind of—you know, we got some butter up in there, some chocolate, OK?
McCoy: I do appreciate you bringing in a chocolate angle for me. My third and important question is, what do we think our Christmas queen Mariah Carey is doing right now to prepare for the impending holiday season? I’m fairly certain the last few years, November 1 at like 12:01 a.m., she breaks out of her Halloween mold and emerges as the Christmas queen that she is.
Seeberger: OK, so this is a very important question. Because this past weekend, I had a few free hours. And for some reason, I ended up in a mall.
McCoy: Curious choice.
Seeberger: Yeah.
McCoy: Didn’t see that coming.
Seeberger: Yeah, always shop online, folks. But I actually ended up at a mall. And all the stores were already fancied up for …
McCoy: Yep.
Seeberger: The festive season. And I’m like, why are there Christmas decorations up?
McCoy: Yep.
Seeberger: When we’ve not even …
McCoy: I know.
Seeberger: Had Halloween?
McCoy: I know. I saw my first ad on TV the other day for Christmas, and I said, “No. No, sir.” Way too early.
Seeberger: So, I hope Mariah’s resting that voice. I hope that she is coming out of the wax museum. They’re rolling her out.
McCoy: Yep.
Seeberger: Getting her all ready for prime time because …
McCoy: Boy, do we need it.
Seeberger: She’s got a busy season ahead.
McCoy: Yeah, indeed. To wrap it up, my favorite was, I think it was 2022. Do you remember when her and Martha Stewart got into a spat over the validity of Thanksgiving, and Martha Stewart was in defense of the cooking around Thanksgiving? I think they’ve resolved their issues, but that brought me a lot of joy.
Seeberger: I will need to go check that out. That sounds like something I would eat right up. With that, folks, go check out your Martha feud du jour, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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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. Mishka Espey is our booking producer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.