The following conversation took place on Tuesday, August 5th, 2025’s episode of Radio Abundance, Founding the Build America Caucus, with United States Congressman Josh Harder, the Founder and Chair of the Congressional Build America Caucus.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

Congressman Harder, thank you so much for joining us on Radio Abundance!

We are so excited to talk to you today for many reasons, but perhaps none more so than the fact that you are the new Founder and Chair of the all-new bipartisan Congressional Build America Caucus.

We are extremely geeked out about this, not least of which because, just a few weeks before you announced, we announced our ourselves as YIMBY Democrats for America with two missions: to Build America and Defeat Fascism. And now, thanks to you, there is a Build America Caucus.

There's going to be folks who listen to this podcast who have been probably following the Build America Caucus so intensely that perhaps they know more about it than you do, but there's also going to be more still every week that are tuning in to join the movement and learn about it for the very first time. So. maybe this is the first time they're hearing about the Build America Caucus — or maybe this is the first time they're hearing about a Caucus!

Congressman Harder, can you tell us, 'What is the Build America Caucus?'

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

Thanks for having me, and thank you for all of the incredible work you're doing!

The Build America Caucus is, pretty simply, the Federal hub for passing pro-growth policies that cut red tape and get America back to building the housing, the energy, and the infrastructure that we so desperately need.

This is a bipartisan group of about 30 members of Congress, stretching across the entire political spectrum. We've got, you know, folks on the Left of the Democratic Party, on the Right and the Middle, and a whole bunch of Republicans across the Republican party as well that are really just united by one thing: that it has become way too difficult to get important projects done, and it's past time we fixed it.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

We'll talk in a little bit about how you came to these ideas, how you started the caucus, and what you're working on now.

As a point of clarification: listeners of this podcast will know that we are huge fans of Congressman Robert Garcia. Earlier this year, he founded his own Caucus, the brand-new bipartisan Congressional YIMBY Caucus. He joined us at our first YIMBYs for Harris event, and he broke the news about when the YIMBY Caucus would launch during our phone-banking events. He joined us as one of our first guests on Radio Abundance, and Congressman Scott Peters, who is in the Build America Caucus as well, even told us that our efforts in the fall with YIMBYs for Harris were part of why the YIMBY Caucus happened: that, in identifying and recruiting and promoting so many, YIMBYs and Democrats in Congress, we sent the signal of how many there were and that there was a mobilized and energized constituency ready to back them, and that folks even used our Green Room as a recruiting station.

I am curious: you're also a Founding Member of the YIMBY Caucus. A lot of our favorite guests, from Congressman Auchincloss and Congresswoman Laura Friedman to Congressman Scott Peters -- are in both Caucuses. So, where does one Caucus begin and the other end? What's the overlap? What's each's unique area? How do you think they'll work together?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

We want to work with anybody. We share a lot of common ground with other Caucuses. I think the big difference is we're just not focused on only housing: the same thing that's holding us back from building the housing that we need -- which I'd argue is an obsession with process and paperwork over the end outcome -- that is also the same thing holding us back from building new nuclear plants or wind turbines or high-speed rail.

So, this is really an 'umbrella group' to address all of the common bottlenecks we have put in front of building good things.

One of the reasons why that's important is the federal government has some jurisdiction over housing -- and we're excited about some of the housing bills that we're launching, although so much of that is in State and Local hands -- but when it comes to energy policy or infrastructure policy or healthcare policy, that's really in the Federal Government's court.

So, we need a group that is going to be focused on what is holding us back from getting good things done across all of these different areas, and especially focused on the areas where the Federal Government is really 'the elephant in the room' and writing the lion's share of the policy that's relevant for folks across the country.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

Can you give me an example of some of those? An area of specific policy or specific regulation where you feel like the Federal Government has been holding us back and that you feel like the Build America Caucus can step up and fix?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

Yeah, I mean, I think about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill that I voted for now four years ago, during the beginning of the Biden Administration. I was incredibly optimistic when I cast that vote about what those bills would be able to do in my community.

We had one bridge in our area that I drove over as a kid that was literally falling apart, and I was incredibly excited by the fact that we were going to put infrastructure dollars into local communities to build the highways and the bridges and the mass transit that we need.

Fast forward to four years later: that bridge is still just as broken as ever. School buses are even banned from driving across it; i's so dangerous. And it could take another 15 years to actually put a shovel in the dirt to get that bridge fixed.

Look at all the wind and solar that we have tried to finance, with the vast majority of it either not getting built at all or not getting built fast enough or being built in the Red States that have actually had a lot of the permanent reforms that the Federal Government should be taking on.

So, this has been a really radicalizing experience for me. To just see how slow good projects have been getting going.

And so, what do we need?

We need a Federal Government that has a sense of urgency and that has a sense of real outcomes and getting good projects out the door and not letting the process govern everything, as opposed to the real needs that people have.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:

I love that you used the word “radicalizing” because it anticipates my very next question, which is: “What radicalized you, and how did you come to these ideas?”

You know, as you talk about the Infrastructure Bill and then shovels not hitting the dirt, I think that's a journey that a lot of us have been on: to fight for decades, to get people to pay attention to climate change and fund the solutions, and then to turn around and go, “wait, are we, The Democratic Party, holding ourselves up? And are we, in California, building less than Texas?”

You know, I've spent most of the last couple decades in San Francisco. You're from the Manteca, Modesto, Tracy, Stockton area. It seems like I've been sending people from me to you to jack rents up where you're from and where you represent.

So, I'm curious how you came to these ideas in the first place? How were you radicalized?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

Look, I think it's hard to not be a 30-something in America and not be radicalized. Or a 20-something. Or a teenager, right?

I mean, young people across the country are fired up because we see that we're not going to have the same future that our parents and grandparents had, right?

I mean, the fact that 56 is the average age of buying a new home today versus 31 when I was born — 56 is the average age of buying a new home versus 31 just a couple of decades ago! -- tells you how far it has gotten to actually achieve the American Dream for most young people.

I think a lot about the famous story of Boris Yeltsin visiting an American grocery store before the fall of the Soviet Union. You've probably heard it. Yeltsin meets with Bush and with Reagan, but nothing had a bigger impression on him than seeing American prosperity and American growth represented in an American supermarket: a huge contrast to the shortages in the Soviet Union at the time.

I still think American supermarkets are the eighth Wonder of the World. I think today, if you were to airdrop somebody from Russia or from China -- which we consider one of our global rivals, if not our main global rival -- I think they'd be pretty underwhelmed.

We still have good supermarkets, but we have a homelessness crisis in San Francisco and across California that's exacerbated by our housing shortage. We pay sky-high rates for electricity because we've made it difficult to build new energy projects. We've waited 30 years for high speed rail without any passengers going.

What Build America is all about is achieving that same sense of awe about American prosperity and American growth compared to our rivals that we had when Boris Yeltsin visited that supermarket in the '80s.

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America: