Congressman Mark DeSauliner: A Legacy of Service and Advocacy"
- jared2766
- 4 days ago
- 27 min read
Title: A Deep Dive into Community Engagement and Policy with Congressman Mark DeSaulnier
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Introduction
Welcome to the Capstone Conversation, where we explore the issues shaping the Greater East Bay. In this edition, host Jared Asch sits down with Congressman Mark DeSaulnier from Contra Costa County, a fixture in the community with over 30 years of service. Congressman DeSaulnier shares insights into his long and storied career, discusses the challenges and triumphs of working across party lines, and offers a glimpse into the policy battles he is most passionate about.
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From Restaurants to Public Office: A Journey of Service
Congressman DeSaulnier began his journey in the East Bay intending to open a restaurant. His career trajectory shifted when his local community encouraged him to get involved in public service. DeSaulnier's path led him from the Planning Commission to the City Council, Board of Supervisors, and finally, the U.S. Congress. Operating under various party affiliations, he values his connections with constituents and colleagues, emphasizing the importance of community engagement and old-time politics.
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Transportation: A Key to Quality of Life
The conversation touches on DeSaulnier's work in transportation, particularly in the Greater East Bay area. He highlights the crucial impact of efficient transportation systems on quality of life, citing projects like the expansion of BART and improvements on Highway 4. With advanced technology interwoven into traffic management, the Congressman envisions a future where community members spend less time commuting and more time with family.
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Healthcare and Public Health: Navigating a Fragmented System
Healthcare reforms and system challenges are high on the Congressman’s agenda. DeSaulnier critiques recent governmental approaches that could drive hospitals out of business and increase emergency room congestion. He warns against shortsighted policies that might worsen healthcare accessibility and equity, particularly targeting at-risk communities.
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The Binary Political Climate and Gun Control
In discussing governance, DeSaulnier reflects on the binary nature of current politics in the U.S. He advocates for an approach to gun violence as a public health issue, leveraging data and community-based insights to prevent tragedies like those involving his own father. His public health-rooted initiatives have received recognition for their effectiveness in places like Contra Costa County.
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Technological Innovations and Education Reform
The Congressman calls for leveraging technological advancements to reshape education, aligning with cognitive development knowledge from leading research. He stresses the importance of using AI judiciously, with an eye toward bolstering the workforce and meeting educational needs.
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Redistricting: An Ongoing Challenge
The issue of redistricting is contentious and complex, with Congressman DeSaulnier urging the adoption of national standards for nonpartisan commissions to ensure fair representation. The need for consistent policies across all states to prevent gerrymandering remains a pivotal concern for equitable political representation.
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Engagement and Participation: The Cornerstones of Democracy
As the discussion closes, DeSaulnier emphasizes the crucial role in democracy. Echoing historical figures like de Tocqueville, he champions informed and active participation over partisan divides. By fostering conversation and understanding, he believes constituents can drive meaningful change.
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Conclusion
Throughout the conversation, Congressman DeSaulnier's commitment to serving his community resonates clearly. With focus areas spanning from transportation and healthcare to education and beyond, his insights offer a compelling vision of civic responsibility. By prioritizing engagement and practicality in policymaking, DeSaulnier hopes to inspire a more inclusive and responsive political landscape.
Join us next time on Capstone Conversations as we continue to explore topics that matter most to the East Bay and beyond.
7. #GunControl
10. #AIandEducation
15. #BayAreaPolitics
19. #SocialJustice
22. #EconomicPolicy
See below for a full transcript
Welcome to the Capstone conversation where you learn about what's happening in the Greater East Bay. I am your host, Jared Asch.
Today we are joined by
Congressman Mark DeSauliner,
From Contra Costa County. You are a long time fixture here in Contra Costa County. So most people pro who are listening probably already know you, but tell us a little bit about what do you want people to know about you and when they reflect on your 30 plus years of community service, what do you want people to remember and what are you the most proud of as part of your intro?
Oh, man. That's a great question. Let's see if I can answer that succinctly. I came from the, to the East Bay to open a restaurant in. At the time I managed and I'm part of a restaurant both in San Francisco and Palo Alto. So we were gonna have kids, like a lot of people, the houses were affordable, so we moved to First Pleasant Hill in Concord.
I also had a restaurant in Berkeley, and when I sold the restaurant in Berkeley, the local head of the Chamber of Commerce, who was a regular at the restaurant, came and said, why don't you get more involved? How about being on the planning commission? So I had been on something called the redevelopment advisory Committee, and then the Planning Commission, two years later, an opening on the city council opened up.
And people, it was a setup, getting on the planning commission. I ran for the city council, got elected. Then there was a vacancy on the board of supervisors. And I was a liberal Republican at the time. I grew up in Boston. I know anybody under 40 looks at me when I say, how is that possible?
Massachusetts, ed Brook was often referred to by the Boston Globe is more liberal than the other senator from Massachusetts, Teddy Kennedy. And he was a Republican African.
Okay there was a vacancy. I was in the city council, I was mayor at the time, and Pete Wilson was the governor Republican. He was running for reelection. I was a small business owner and he appointed me to that vacancy. And then I got elected three times subsequent to that as the Republican Party moved further, right?
They really hated somebody who voted the way I did. So I switched parties ran for the assembly successfully. I was the first. A freshman in the history of the state of California to be the chair of the assembly transportation Committee. Then I was elected the Senate was chair of the Labor Committee and then transportation housing.
And then when George Miller retired, he and I were friends from the restaurant. Actually, I used to tease him about when I was a republican. He used to say, mark, you're not supposed to vote the way you do and be a Republican. You're in the wrong part of the country and the wrong party. So then I've had this job.
Now I'm in my sixth term. I'm a senior member of the Educational Labor Committee. I'm a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and I'm a ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee. So what do I like most about it? The people. Quite frankly, I think this comes from being in the restaurant business.
Our staff does a great job. We answer the phone when people call. I answer phones here and we've been able to help a lot of people who just need help and they're frustrated by the time they call an elected official 'cause they've tried everything else. And a lot of it is just we open a case file, I can follow the case files, we tell 'em what we can do to help.
And then, it's just old time politics. I've done more town halls than any member of Congress in the last 11 years, and I love that dealing with people. I think right now in particular for a variety of reasons people just feel very isolated. So I get a lot from it by being out in the community a lot, and I feel like people appreciate it because.
I'm in a position of influence and responsibility, and they see me as a human being. So those things I like best. I can think of bills that I've been involved with that I'm very proud of, but we can talk about that. You can tell by the background. I've spent a lot of time in transportation.
Yeah. Actually, I love that.
If explain to the on YouTube, there's shovels behind us, right? Golden shovels. What are these about?
Because I started as a planning commissioner in local transportation. Of course, transportation is a big issue for people in the East Bay. We have between my congressional district and Eric Swalwell, we have four of the 10, what's called mega commutes in the country.
So that's over a half hour and a half each way to get to work. So that's a quality of life thing that's all the time away from your kids, your spouse in the community, and it's a real problem. All of these are from significant groundbreakings I've been involved with over the years. I'm particularly proud of a lot of 'em, but this one I put a lot of work in the fourth floor of the cul, the cot.
And that was a very heavy lift. 'cause I had to work with my colleagues from Alameda in San Francisco who were afraid that it was gonna expand urban sprawl. At the same time, I was a principal in our urban growth boundary, which redirected growth back into the cities for reasonable infill growth, which you can see now.
In Walnut Creek. Vehicle miles traveled. B-M-T-B-M-T. So every one of those two incomes that you can get out of traffic and get to be home faster, that's a quality of life issue. So that's what those are about. I sometimes say that the age to transportation, the process for getting aging is a wall of shovels and plaques, but they're good memories.
Yeah. That's Benitia Bridge. Highway four. Big expansion there to help people. EA was a big accomplishment, right? That I was very involved with.
So let's pivot back. You talked about influence and how you can help influence them, but right now that you're a Democrat and you're a member of the Minority Party, what is you?
You've also served in Congress where you've been in the majority party. In opposition to a Republican president, but you've also been there with a democratic president. Talk about what does being in the minority mean and how has that shifted the level of influence and dollars that come back to the district?
For reasons that historians will have to figure out the United States, and indeed the world is very binary right now, whether it's our politics or. In the Middle East. One of the most binary situations for thousands of years. So it's frustrating for somebody who believes in Jefferson said the art of politics in America will be compromised.
So I have very strongly felt progressive feelings. I think the country swings back and forth. Political scientists like to say that's a pendulum process. It's not being in the middle all the time. It's trying to. Go back and forth between individual responsibility and our responsibility to one another's.
I think we've swung way over to the right, so we're trying to get back where we, and there's a lot of reasons for that too, starting with Reagan. I think of writing, writing a book called The Plague, and it would be the industrial. Political complex where these consultants who are unlicensed, people don't know who they are.
They're the Rasputin and Machiavelli of our time. They live off of conflict. A very famous Democratic consultant once told me war is good, and my response is. For German munitions manufacturers in the thirties and the forties. And for political consultants in America right now. It has always been, thus to a degree.
If you remember the calendar pamphlets at the beginning of the country he was a pamphleteer. Who wrote outrageous things that it was, he was the rasputin of the founding era. So it's a problem we've had right now, it's particularly bad. And technology has added to it because the sophistication of targeting and algorithms and social media has made it particularly bad.
And also people live on a very superficial level and life is complex and politics can be complex. So it's difficult. I still get a lot done with my Republican colleagues but when I go back Tuesday, I'm just told we gotta get back there Tuesday. I'll have heartfelt conversations with people. I consider friends who are conservatives.
But trying to get those three people to help us come to a compromise, which I think could easily be done if the Republicans and the President comes to their census on healthcare and fiscal responsibility. But right now, they're afraid to do that because they'll get primaried if they do anything that they disagree with the President of the United States.
And there'll be millions of dollars spent in a primary Republican primary, which the Koch brothers have perfected. For 40 years. And that's part of why the Republican parties moved, and why I left. So it's very binary. It's difficult, but you have to choose your fights. I say this story a lot.
Virginia Fox, who's a very conservative member of the education committee, is now chair of the Rules committee. She's from North Carolina and she introduces me to new Republican members of the Education Labor Committee is, this is Nia. He's our favorite socialist from San. Francisco. So it's a running joke and I say, Virginia, by your standards, I'm Trotsky I, so it is a difficult time for compromise, but we still find ways to do it.
The last, since January 20th, it's become exponentially ordered because of President Trump.
So let's talk through that. There's been a massive overhaul. In the federal government under this administration, job cuts, workers' cuts, massive changes to healthcare and education. There's a seismic shift, right?
Even I would say this is even bigger than after September 11th when we created a new department of Homeland Security. You have the seismic shift going on. Highlight some of the impacts in managing the federal government. Related to all of
that. This is, these are true believers. So Mr. Vote the who's in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, some of the things he said over the years he wants to traumatize public employees.
He wants them to be afraid to come to work every day, things like that. This is a, like a jihad for Libertarian Coke funded people who they think it's survival of the fittest. And the private sector will take every care of everything, I believe, in the private sector, but it doesn't take care of everything.
It's motivated by profits. I own small businesses. I in a very thin market margin, high mortality business in restaurants. Yeah. But you need to have a social contract, and that means we need responsibility. We want to take care of our neighbors so we don't have to call the police. We want to help. It says a fire, we call a fire department that you can't, the private sector doesn't do that well because there isn't a profit margin structured.
So these are true believers, and it's not about managing efficiently. Doge was not about efficiency. It was about cruelty and chaos, and as a person who's socially progressive, but as a former small business owner who used to be somewhat teased in the restaurant business as being a numbers guy. I wanna make government work efficiently.
That part of the Republican party has been burned and driven out, and I don't understand it. Why wouldn't we all want to make sure that taxpayers dollars are invested well and efficiently? Whether you're progressive Yeah. Or conservative. And they don't believe in that. It's just survival of the fittest.
It's cruel. And I don't know how their view of America in the long run how did we fight two world wars? We couldn't have done that with the private sector and survival of the fittest. And we've lost that belief in government being efficient. Yes. But we need each other to survive.
Humans didn't evolve because we were the biggest, strongest, fastest animal. We did it because we figured out how to work with one another.
Community. That's an interesting perspective with within that there are. Massive changes about to happen healthcare. We just had the head of the Northern Central California Hospital Association on the podcast talking about those changes.
I know you've gotten lots of briefings on that. You've got the food bank which has met with you a number of times talking about the changes. You're talking about changes that will last four, 10 years in. Dramatically cutting, particularly rural hospitals and other things. So that doesn't necessarily impact your district 'cause you're more urbanized.
But it does, it's changing. There's 80% of people at the hospitals are going in on government funded healthcare. We just had a round
table with all CFOs, CEOs of our health system here in Contra Cross and the East Bay, and there was a comment from a CFO of a major. Hospital who said if what they got passed in the big ugly bill, which cut 15.1 million people according to CBO and K Family Foundation, they're Medicaid.
And that then it affects Medicare affects private private pay. They will go out business, so they will. We will see hospitals close right here. I, two days ago, I was in the emergency room at Contra Costa Regional Center. I was a deciding vote 25 years ago as a county supervisor to build that hospital.
Magnificent place We, in this county in particular, was an example of an urban county years ago, of going upstream and doing primary care, quality of lifestyle changes, letting kids know you eat good food, you exercise all those good things, you don't smoke, you don't drink. You'll be healthier. So the prevention part, they're eliminating primary care clinics.
They're eliminating. So we're gonna send everybody into the emergency room and they're going to have higher acuity. They're gonna be sick by the time they get there. You're gonna have, I was just with the fire chief talking about how many ambulances will be taking really sick people to, so it's the dumbest financial model I've ever seen.
This is the biggest attack on American's healthcare system. Them such as it is, and it's notorious. We have 18% of the US GDP goes to our healthcare system in the United States. That's the highest of all developed countries, and we have the worst outcomes in terms of life expectancy, high acuity for diseases.
There's a lot of inefficiencies that we could get rid of. PBMs, I have a bill to get rid of them. Denials in private pay. I'm the ranking member when we're in the minority. So right now I'm the chair of the Health, employment, labor and Pensions subcommittee. I spend a lot of time on this, so it's a, I don't understand the madness of this.
People are going to die with what they already passed and what they're proposing right now because they won't get the healthcare and people will be getting in ambulances and going to the emergency room rather than. Avoiding that acuity and that disease by being in a primary care program.
Is it just about cutting the budget?
Is it they're just, hey, smaller government, the private sector will find a way.
I guess that, and to be quite frank, I think they're social pess. I think president of the United States and Mr. Voight don't have an ability to understand how average people live and the consequences.
So I want to take this building community and working together concept into gun control.
I know that's an issue you've cared a lot about. Historically, as I watch Congress, gun control measures can almost only get passed when one party or the, and then it swings back, right? So Democrats pass gun control measures. Republicans almost repeal them when they're back in power. How do we take a new look?
So if we're looking for eight years ahead, how do we actually make a substantial change? So it's not just who's ever in power and we're passing a new law for two years.
My approach since I was in local government, and again, Contra Costa County, had a state of the art program. Approaching gun violence as a public health issue.
So when you approach it from that and you look at the research my father committed suicide with a handgun in 1989. That started my interest before I got into politics on gun violence, but also on behavioral health. He had, he was an alcoholic, so he had mental health issues and then the gun was there.
Of the roughly 130 people on average who take their lives with guns or are a victim of gun violence and death in the United States every day. Two thirds of them are suicides. So what we want to do and what we've done in Contra Costa and in California and in Connecticut, if you go to Gifford's, they have a wonderful, Gabby Gifford's is a friend.
We went to the Kennedy School. We were local government. We became friends before she. What Giffords has done is they take the public health process and they analyze when you take that approach analytically, and it's not about all of these processes, by the way, have already gone through constitutional challenge.
So Second Amendment, we're not taking Second Amendment rights away. The bills that we have passed in Contra Costa that I'm proud of. Many of them were, my issues in the legislature and I'm trying to do at the federal level are based on how do we avoid people taking their lives, the proximity to guns.
People from the NRA will say they'll kill themselves everywhere anyways. That's not true. It's the availability of the guns. So we've done research, extensive research in the violence prevention field. You the ability to overdose is exponentially harder. Than having a loaded gun if you already are predisposed to depression.
So one of the things I'm very excited about now is I have over the years put together a program called Not Here, and it's a combination of all the best practices that aren't preeminent, preempted at the federal level that you can do low. And I'd be happy to show you, I do town halls on this in slides with Giffords where you are 35% less likely to be involved in gun violence on a school campus if you live in California higher in Contra Costa, because of our gun violence programs, you are 25% less likely to be involved in gun violence in general.
And you can go to Giffords and they show Connecticut and California lead in Contra Costa. It's actually. Better because of what we've done as a public health issue. All of these are I have a state sewage bill making sure that people, law enforcement because we've had problems with law enforcement and we had a fatality famous one in San Francisco because somebody, a homeless person, had grabbed a gun out of a law enforcement's trunk that was open and ended up shooting a young girl from Pat from Pleasanton.
On the Embarcadero. So simple things like that. I have a bill that I've done countless times I can't do in Congress that when the Department of Justice te through their testing process shows that smart guns work with a 95%, same same level of success of an, in terms of firing and responding smart guns are.
The be the best ones are you have a palm print. Yeah. And they won't work unless the palm print has been improved. And you can get up to 15 people on these guns. So as soon as the DOJ does their test and says it works the same level of any gun, then that would be the only thing you could sell. And it's inducing more investment and we're pretty close.
That works fine. But over time, because of the shock, that's the part they're trying to work out. So there's a whole series of bills like that, including. Identifying at risk people, and we use them in Contra Costa for years, so we do risk assessments where teachers can say, Hey, we've got a young person we think needs a little counseling, and the sheriff and law enforcement partner with our behavioral health folks, and they'll check the person out and do risk assessment.
They have stopped countless number of high risk people by not imposing anything on them just saying, Hey. We heard from your teacher, your counselor, you're having some problems. These are the things that we should be considering. So lots of things like that. They're thoughtful and I would recommend you can go to our website and look at our not here program, so you don't have to wait for the federal go.
Yeah, we
will we'll put that in the blog. So if we'll share that information so people can link to it and learn more. I think any resource like that is good. And I like that you're using research and thinking outside the box in terms of ways to approach things. You mentioned mental health.
That comes up on a ton of conversations with most elected officials at all different levels. From your office perspective, what can Congress do? What can the federal government do to make an impact on that?
So you mentioned about how we've been in the majority, we've been in the minority. I am very proud of a very big bill.
I put a lot of time into 'cause of my background called Mental Health Matters Act. It got out of the house when we were in the majority with. A Republican vote. And then it never came up in the Senate. So one of the reasons I stay in Congress is to get the votes to get it passed. I spent a lot of time with Republicans, including in committee hearings that were public.
Talking about this should be bipartisan. Let's invest in the research. It's a, it's depre issues around depression. I worked with a former surgeon general in the Biden administration with research he did and CDC did about how social media and algorithms are targeting adolescent kids, particularly girls who the algorithms are picking up that are predisposed towards depression.
At the, a crucial part of their cognitive development. One of the dynamics between these two subjects, gun manufacturers and social media companies are preempted from civil lawsuits by federal protection. Why do we do that if they, if you just could bring a lawsuit for all the damage that the gun manufacturer has done, it's the only consumer product in the United States that's protected.
It's protected because of political extortion. And then social media too. The reason for social media years ago was, let's get it started so that it can build a critical mass. I'm sorry, but meta doesn't need a critical mass right now from a financial model. So if they're targeting adolescents to bring them as a New York Times reporter did a story on how he discovered YouTube.
His algorithms were targeting adolescent girls so that they could go through. The algorithms would bring them all the way through their depression to a YouTube that would show them how to commit suicide. When he brought that up the investigative reporter YouTube said, oh, we're sorry. We didn't mean to do that.
They would've been more careful if they were subject to a civil lawsuit for what they were doing.
That's come up before in California, allowing the technology companies to be sued, right? For
Buffy Wicks, one of my favorite members of the legislature and they did a great job. This last section of leading the country in this California leads the way we have a special culture and trying to get it done.
The analogy to guns. Yeah, same thing with social media. Unfortunately, these industries. Have a lot of influence because of their financial ability, particularly on independent committees. So Citizens United open this up and that's one of the reasons we're so binary is Citizens United Five for decision by the Supreme Court saying that money equaled free speech.
I wanna come back to the shovels behind us in transportation. We were actually talking before about Contra Costa leading the way in transportation. We're gonna make all our listeners in Alameda and Solano get jealous now. What are some of the things that you've done to help innovate this area in your role in congress?
I've done a lot and I'm proud of it. And it goes back to being proud because we're trying to improve quality of life for individuals. Meeting with two income households in Brentwood and Antioch who bought in ex houses they could afford, but they could drive to Silicon Valley or back in the financial district.
So it's bigger than transportation. Every transportation program I look at, it gets mom and dad home to their kids faster and in their community. So fourth Bo on the call, the co E bar. Expansion of Highway four and the expansion of our transit system so that all of our transit is connected more easily to heavy rail of art.
So it's all intersected The smart mobility program that I've been involved with for years and we've done such a great job at Contra Cross. It really led the country in a lot of ways connects all of our infrastructure to the technology that monitors in real time. Traffic situations all the time, and I'm very proud of the millions of dollars I've just gotten.
So that we'll be the first urban county we think in the country and the world, that every streetlight will have the best available technology that will connect to one central traffic management system, where you'll have people 24 hours a day dealing with the technology, moving traffic gets those people home faster.
Reduces cost of fuel, reduces pollution, public health. So I'm really proud of that. People will be able to get a home faster because the Contra cost, transportation authority, and I and others have worked on this for years and we're really ahead of the rest of the country in the world. We work with the transportation research schools at Berkeley and at Davis, of which I'm very proud of.
I've gotten them millions of dollars to do the research that helps deploy this technology. So all of those things. And we're about to announce a grant for $166 million that in the six 80 corridor from Walnut Creek to Dublin, all of which I represent, which will be a state of the art corridor of the United States, where we mix all of this together with the infrastructure and we'll be able to model and show people all the benefits in their life.
This is a new one on top of the 166 million that already happened? It hasn't
happened 'cause
we're waiting it
to be released. Okay. From the administration. So given some of the attacks. But I secretary Duffy served with me in the Transportation Infrastructure Committee. We've talked about this in public.
He's offered to meet in private, so we're. Going to meet with him. But it, business community was very involved in this. This is about people's quality of life, not the party affiliation. So I'm very excited about that project. So all of those, but mostly, what it really comes down to is that sense of all of that combines to get people I will never know or meet for a long time, closer to their families and closer to their community and not stuck in traffic.
Yeah. One of the things that I noticed about that is Tim Hale from CCTA talks about do you hear that Tim? The congressman thinks you're best. You can add that to your LinkedIn.
We won't talk about Randy,
he's predecessor. It was also great.
Yeah, we, but on six 80 you can. If you actively manage it through technology, they estimate that it's the equivalent to adding one lane.
Yep. Which would get, it's, that's 20% faster commutes we're talking
about, and I had the benefit of years ago when I was a county supervisor, I was appointed to the Air district and then the carb, and I was on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Through that, I got two Marshall Fund grants to study what the EU was doing.
In these areas and it was very selective, so I'm very proud of that. And I was also able because of the carb appointment, I'd negotiate California Air Resources board credits with auto manufacturers. So I'd meet with the Japanese there and here, and they were ahead of us on this. So we learned from them in Japan.
They had a system years ago where you could get on your cell phone program. It. So that you had your commute and your errands programmed. Now these were pilot programs then, but they brought them to scale on what the fastest route to get the next day. And in real time, now we have that on our phones.
But all incorporating all of this brilliant technology in a way that's impactful that day to day-to-day lives. One of the biggest challenges is bringing these pilot programs to scale. 'cause you need money and you need to be smart about it. And we've done that in contra.
I know education's important to you.
You are very active in the house education committees. What do you want to accomplish in the next five years as education reforms? And I'm going to ask you to take a technological look that I think using AI and using new tools, schools can totally transform in this country. How do you see you can help and what's your sort of passion?
And going forward more than in the past.
So one of my big initiatives are technology innovation and cognitive development. So the earlier conversations I just had a wonderful conversation with the author of the AI Con because on the labor side, my initiative is the consequences on the workforce to AI and her book she's a linguist from the University of Washington.
The AI Con is really good about. In technology frequently, the technology from the Industrial Revolution. I grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, eliciting my grandparents talk about working in the mills there. That technologies help the investors more than the working people. So it's, it can help everybody. We wanna make sure it helps everybody, investors, but the workforce, too often it's come at the expense of the workforce, and that's what we're seeing with ai, that they're gonna just eliminate jobs.
I have a bill that says. You have to let the labor department know when you're laying people off and they're being replaced by ai, and tell us how you mitigate the community impact on that. We're not saying you can't do it, we just want to know what the impacts are so we can, as a culture can start to get ahead of it.
So those two buckets on the educational Labor committee are big things for me, and they're important. My interest in behavioral health. We now know through research and a lot of it's done here in the Bay Area, particularly at UCSF, and they're wonderful behavioral health programs that are part of national Institutes for Health and the Bay National Behavioral Health Institutes.
In the last 50 years, we've learned more about how our brains work and develop that in all the thousands of years of human develop. Because of brain imaging and because of our discovery of DNA. So why aren't we taking that information and helping people and enforce, unfortunately, a lot of people in the private sector are using it to make money.
Nothing wrong with that, but we gotta know. We need to know the negative consequences for that. So issues around depression kids not being able to thrive and do the best we know that. David Burs just had a great column. I'm a big fan of David Burs about literacy and how our literacy rates created Democracy.
Franklin and Adams, Jefferson, they all wrote about as the printing press develop, got developed Franklin as a apprentice in his fathers print shop in Boston. The how we now, we know how we read affects, how we retain information. There's a wonderful book by a neurologist at, williams College called the Shallows from 20 years ago, and he talks about their research about human skulls grew, matched to where literacy grew over hundreds and thousands of years.
Unfortunately, they're now seeing that human skulls are starting because of how we process information, how we store it, and how we retain that information. Those are things that we need to research, be aware of, not jump to unfounded conclusions, but be thoughtful about. Mental health and how we avoid crisis.
Again, back to the emergency or analogy, let's use our analytical, non-partisan approach to problem solving to go upstream and figure out how do we help people with the knowledge we have so we're not dealing with crisis over a person's lifetime. And also the investment. It's just a better investment so we don't have to deal with high.
Behavioral health problems, which we are in a crisis right now in this country. And a lot of research. And I would attribute it to technology in the Bay area of it was a wonderful thing. But unfortunately it's being used in ways that are hurting young people and their mental health and we've gotta change that.
Yeah. So that's a passion for me, and I'm trying to work with my Republican colleagues and a lot of them realize it, but the sense of urgency I don't feel for my colleagues,
I want to pivot from policy and talk a second
about redistricting efforts around the country and here in California.
Talk to us about how it impacts the East Bay, your congressional district and everything else.
We'll leave the politics out. I
can't talk about politics. We're in this interview in a government office, and there's a very. Strict line about, and I know people have a hard time with it, but I'm the ranking member of the ethics committee and I will be the chair when we're in the majority, and I'm proud of that and I hope my constituents are proud of the fact that a member from the Bay Area is in that position.
On the big approach. This country has had gerrymandering since its founding for districts, house districts, legislative districts. Most of your voters, prob probably don't know this, but gerrymandering came from one of the founders its name was Albert Jerry and he's buried in the Congressional cemetery, famous cemetery, not far.
Actually. His grave is close to John Phillips Su, it's a famous cemetery in dc So this manipulating the district lines and we've tried to deal with it to make sure that it's as equitable as possible, reflective of the communities. And it's been a challenge since our funding. Okay. I am a co-author and was very involved in a bill that only have democratic supporters that require a national standard for every state to have independent, non-partisan commissions.
The problem with our commissions now is they're a hodgepodge. Yep. So Texas doesn't have one. They can do what they want. When that applies to California, 'cause they decide to gerrymander. Based on a Supreme Court decision, again, that changed years of precedent. That said, basically the current Supreme Court majority, all Republican appointees, said that the federal government doesn't have a role in how states choose house districts.
That opened the floodgates. And you can't convince me that Texas didn't know about it because within weeks. The legislature came back in a special session and then we're doing it all over the country.
Let's all of these optics of millions of dollars, it's really simple. If they really believe, if Republicans really believe what they're saying, let's pass the legislation. Why don't Republicans co-authors of this bill in the house represent. A national mandate of nonpartisan, bipartisan, equal representation, redistricting commission for each state.
That would be the solution. And will it be perfect? No, these are human institutions with all of that implies in our history, but that's the anecdote. I have a problem with Californians having been involved with it. It's good. But I had this argument when we started, why does the minority party. Have five votes on the commission.
The majority have five votes in the commission and everybody else gets four. It should be proportionate or it should be weighted voting. And that was a compromise that I regret not being more stubborn about at the time.
All right, fair enough. What in the closing minutes here, what other thoughts?
What do you wanna leave your constituents with the people in the East Bay here?
You have to be engaged. I de Tocqueville said when he wrote, de Democracy in America is an Observation, is a Frenchman, that amazing book.
He said, the basic genius of America is the belief that you can expect extraordinary things from ordinary people. Unfortunately, you can also expect the other as humans. The antidote to what we're going through as an engaged citizenry. It's not about Republicans, conservatives, liberals, progressives, or Democrats.
It's people who won't be fooled, and we can have a legitimate debate about individual responsibility and our social responsibility. Hamilton and Jefferson fought about that at the founding. There's a famous story, and if the docent tells it if you go to Jefferson's, Monticello, when you walk in, Jefferson had.
When he opened it, it's still there. He had a bust of himself and a bust of Hamilton facing one another, and somebody said to him, why do you have Hamilton there? You disagree with him on everything? And Jefferson's response was, that's why. It's that conversation we've had since the, before the founding of the country.
So it's citizen engagement. Stop thinking about these stupid, shallow political arguments and get underneath and have a conversation. . I'm proud to have that with anybody, whether they agree with me or not.
All right. I appreciate it. Congressman, thank you for joining me today. This was great. Thank you so much for asking me.
This political therapy.
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