Founding the Build America Caucus: Congressman Josh Harder on Radio Abundance

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:

So, you go on this process of radicalization. You come to see this as the solution. At a certain point, you had to go, “Oh, okay, I think a huge next step for this could be a Caucus. And I, Josh Harder, I'm the man to build it.” And now, you've got to go recruit, and you've got to figure out who should be a member, and you've got to bring folks to the table.

What is the actual process, first of deciding to try to start a Caucus? Why a caucus? Why you? How are you going to get this done? And then, how'd you actually go about building it?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

I've been admiring what's happened with the YIMBY movement at a state and local level for many years now. And I've really hoped that something was going to be created at the Federal Government level that I could jump onto. And it just didn't happen fast enough.

There have been a number of times over the last couple years when we've had a real opportunity to move some major policy, either on housing or on energy permitting. There were some great bills over the last couple years that almost made it.

But the opposition to those bills was far more united than the folks that actually wanted them to happen. So, eventually, they died.

I thought there was a need, now more than ever, to have a Federal complement to so much of that great energy that's happening in thinktanks and at a local level across the country.

So, I got together with a bipartisan group of a half dozen members that were really thinking through what this could look like. We scoped it out. We went out and talked to a lot of folks.

The demand is real. There is nobody more frustrated by our ability to build good things than members of Congress that have voted, that have taken difficult votes, that have walked the plank on these issues time and time again, and then are unable to go back to their community and say, “Hey, look at this great bridge we've built! Look at this great wind project! Look at this great housing development!” Because, you know, by the time those projects get actually built, we're all going to have gray hair and be retired for decades on end because it is so long to actually bring these projects to, to fruition.

So, there's a lot of take-up, and I think folks are pretty excited.

Now, we have to translate that energy and that momentum into real policy and real action and, ultimately, the change that people need.

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

You mentioned a couple bills in the past you would've liked to see succeed that didn't get passed. What are some of the bills that you think would've been great that were voted down?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

I think probably the biggest missed opportunity for me was actually in the text of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. I was one of the folks that was involved in that negotiation, and there has been some tremendous work done on how expensive it is to expand mass transit to build high speed rail, to build just new highways and bridges across the country, compared to even our European friends and allies.

Right? Why is it so much more expensive to build the Second Avenue Subway in New York City than it is to expand the Paris Metro?

I had hoped that some of those ideas would make it into the text, that some of those reforms would make it into the text of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and they didn't. There just really was not a groundswell of support because the beneficiaries of that lack of reform -- the beneficiaries of high costs -- are very vocal, very organized, and very concentrated. Whereas the mass public that are paying those high costs -- the folks that are not benefiting from the expanses of mass transit or the housing projects that need to happen -- are a lot less organized.

And, you know, one of the benefits of the YIMBY movement is actually bringing together a political coalition of all the folks who are affected by this, who have been, I think, largely on the sidelines.

So, ultimately, it didn't happen. And I think the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is not going to do enough. In retrospect, if you look at it decades from now, it's just not going to make the major improvements in our infrastructure that are needed because it's all going to cost too much. The inputs, especially during COVID, went sky-high, and we did not put in place the policies needed to actually build the projects that people want.

So, that was one big missed opportunity. The other was the Inflation Reduction Act and some of the energy policies that we need. I think anybody in California should be furious that 80% of the dollars to build clean energy -- which are now being taken away by this current Administration -- were going to Red States and Red Districts because we have made it so difficult to build wind turbines and solar projects and the like across California.

That really frustrated me. There have been some good reforms about permitting that tried to get across the finish line and didn't quite make it.

Build America is about how do we actually get more momentum behind those projects to actually get them done.

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

You mentioned some of the challenges here. We will talk more about those and how to overcome them.

You're obviously organizing in Congress. We're trying to organize among voters.

As you went about organizing and building your membership, I'm curious if there were any surprises? Both among folks you didn't expect to be allies, but also among folks you might have expected to be allies and maybe the pushback that you got?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

Certainly both. There have been a whole lot of folks that have come up to me, who I vote with very rarely, who have told me all of these horror stories about how a particular project in their district that they've been trying to get off the ground for decades and decades hasn't happened, and how it has made them far more passionate about this. So, it's been a great opportunity to build new allies and get more folks involved.

But unfortunately, the opposite has also been the case. After we launched this Caucus a couple weeks ago, there were a lot of folks coming up to me, and one person came up to me who was a very senior leader in the Democratic Party.

She told me, “I am so glad you're building this. This is great. You know, I have a project in my district that I've been working on for a long time, and I can't tell you how necessary it is to get permit reform done to fix the way that we do housing and all the rest!”

And I said, “Great! That sounds fantastic. Do you want to join?”

And this person said, “Oh, no! Can't do that! Don't want to make anybody mad! I'm not going to be, involved at all in you know, signing onto any letters, signing onto anything. But, I really hope that you fix this!” Which I just thought was a perfect encapsulation of why this has been tough.

I think the need for reform is enormous. But the obstacles are often quite clear, especially to folks that have been around for a long time and know a lot of the interest groups that benefit from the status quo. I think we'll get more folks like that. I think there's a new generation of leadership coming to the party, and that as more folks are frustrated by what they're seeing across their communities, we will build more momentum.

But, there are certainly a lot of folks that I think hope we succeed, but aren't necessarily going to be on the vanguard of the change we need.

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

And how do you think we change that? Because that does seem like the crux of the political issue. You've got many, many folks in office who know this is the right thing to do and just cannot lose the votes and don't feel like they can comfortably take that stand.

I think often, “thank God for organizations like YIMBY Law,” because you will have folks say, “Hey, I really believe that this YIMBY stuff is the right thing to do. I cannot sell it. But the moment I've got that paper in my hand that says, these evil corporate shills are going to sue us, so we have to, then I can bring that to my constituents.”

Especially within our own party, how do you take that wider message out there? And for people who already know this is the right thing to do but don't feel like they're able to win with that message politically, how do you reckon we can change that?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

I think the most important thing we need to do is change the mentality of the Democratic Party.

To me, the Progressive vision should be housing that people can afford. It should be clean energy that folks want. It should be mass transit that is safe for lower cost and lower emissions.

That should be what the Democratic Party is trying to achieve. The Democratic Party needs to be about a government that works. Every successful national iteration of The Democratic Party, going back decades, has been a party that has been furious at the status quo and focused on reforming government. That was what Bill Clinton got, right? That was what Barack Obama got, right?

I think that was, frankly, one of the things The Biden Administration got wrong. They didn't have that sense of urgency and that frustration with the status quo and the need for reform enough. And people felt that, and people were pretty frustrated out in ‘real America,’ and they didn't feel like that frustration was echoed in the halls of DC enough.

So, we have to change that basic mentality, and we have to change the idea that “things are fine right now.” People are frustrated across the country, and if you look at the last couple of elections, people are ‘ping-pong-ing’ back and forth between voting for a Democratic President, voting for a Republican President. Most people, I think, are frustrated by both parties.

The party that wins on how to actually get stuff built and how to lower cost for real Americans is the party that I think is going to win a larger government mandate and a larger political mandate in the years to come.

I hope that's us.

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

I am curious how you might frame that, especially for, let's say, the furthest Left wing of The Democratic Party?

I bring that up because I think there's a lot of folks who are the tip of the spear on a lot of issues around justice and how we take care of each other, who are naturally very worried that we're going to take Robert Moses' decades of smashing cultural communities to rubble to build parking lots and highways and now run that play again with unfettered corporations.

I also think a lot of us thought, “Hey, once we convince the Democrats on deregulating some of this, we'll easily have partners on the Right,” and, as Congressman Auchincloss says, there's been a big turn on the Right to a government that is more statist, more top-down, more anti-market — a ‘Supreme Leader’ micro-managing the economy and our lives.

We like to talk a lot about the idea of Progressive Abundance and the FDR era, where you've got private citizens building the Empire State Building, and governments building the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge and passing The New Deal and fighting the Nazis, and the idea that Abundance isn't just a way to put more money in working folks' pockets or lift up vulnerable communities or make sure anyone can live anywhere and pursue their dreams anywhere, but also for governments and for building up state capacity to solve real and centuries-old Progressive goals.

I am curious, specifically within our own party and the self-proclaimed “Progressive” wing: what are the magic words? How would you frame this message to our allies there?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

I think it's happening. We have folks on the Far Left of the Democratic Party who are part of this Caucus and are part of this coalition and movement.

It is not “Progressive” to have housing cost millions of dollars per year to buy a new house, pricing out a young generation from achieving the American Dream.

It's not “Progressive” to essentially make it impossible to build solar and wind projects to achieve our clean energy goals and everything else.

I actually think an America that builds and a government that can get stuff done is the most Progressive government we can have. A government that can actually achieve those ambitions is critically important for folks.

So, I actually think this is going to be something that becomes easier.

I think it is really a generational battle in a lot of ways. There are two challenges. One is, “How do we sort of convince the old guard of the Democratic Party that times have changed since the 1970s and our problem today is not about stopping bad projects; it's about getting good projects built?”

And then, the second is, “How do we actually talk to young people and make sure that they are not cynical and apathetic and have the feeling that nothing can ever change?”

I go to a lot of High Schools and Community Colleges and talk to young students, and I see this wave of anger and despair that I think is going to be potentially very politically dangerous for any party that doesn't actually get on board with making life better for folks.

I think where we could go wrong is if we do not react quickly enough to that cynicism with real results and if we're not actually able to lower housing prices and make sure that folks can live down the street from their parents instead of down the stairs in their parents' basements, which is what a lot of folks are fearful of and a lot of parents are fearful of.

We have to fix that. I think the party that fixes that is going to be the party that actually is going to be able to win and build the durable majority for the long term.

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

So, we know the problem. We know the solution. Let's talk a little bit about the outcomes now, right? The light at the end of the tunnel. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I think it's a problem widely in American politics that people don't know what the vision is. I think it's especially true of Democrats, right? What do you want the country to look like in 10 years? 15? 20? Paint me a picture!

So, I was really excited when I was talking to a member of your team who dropped, very casually, the phrase, “The Golden Age of Abundance.”

I love this. I was thinking often in the fall of the idea of a “New American Golden Age,” right up until Trump started using it, and I thought, “oh, well that phrase is now gone for a generation. That's a bummer!” But, I believe in the idea of a “Golden Age of Abundance.”

There's a lot of statistics on our side and history on our side, but I think people need to be able to see it in their mind's eye and understand what their life experience will look like: what it will look like, what it will smell like, what it will be like to touch the Golden Age of Abundance?

So, I wonder if you can paint us a picture of what America will be like in 10, 15, 20 years if you succeed?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

I want to build a Party and a country that is optimistic again and that believes in growth and prosperity. That “Golden Age” that Trump has stolen from us -- I think what that looks like is pretty simple: It's a country where people can move where they want. Live where they want, regardless of the crazy housing prices that we have today. Where we have the clean energy that we need. The infrastructure to get us there. And, by the way, the healthcare!

We haven't talked a lot about healthcare. It's something that I care a lot about, and I think the Federal Government has all the tools to fix.

We have a lot of innovation happening in technology with AI, where it's going to really propel drug discovery very quickly. That drug discovery is not going to actually matter much if we're not able to fix the way we do clinical trials and the way we actually get treatments for Cancer and Alzheimer's through the clinical trial pipeline to actually result in better cures and better healthcare and ultimately lower costs for folks.

And so, what does that “Golden Age” look like? I think it looks like a country that's optimistic again, because we have showed people that there is a prosperity and a growth agenda that can be shared and that can be benefit everybody, as opposed to that negative, zero-sum mentality that I think has infected our country right now.

It's a little bit of a vicious circle: the more cynical our politics becomes, the more zero-sum mindsets predominate, which make it difficult to actually break out and achieve that shared prosperity that we need. The “Golden Age” is about fixing that from the beginning and starting with that sense of optimism for the country that we want to achieve.

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

That's gorgeous, and we are behind you all the way.

As we come to an end here, let's bring it back to “brass tacks” right, and what you are doing. The Caucus is just a few weeks old, but I am very curious what the day-to-day is actually like for the first few weeks of a Caucus as you figure out what to prioritize to make this real and you have to decide where to actually focus your attention?

What is first up? Next up? What are you working on now? What should we expect?

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

I think, in terms of our goals, we are really trying to do three things. One is: we're trying to help amplify the public conversation around what Abundance, what Build America, what YIMBYism actually means, and make this the center of our Party and of the country's agenda going forward.

Two: there are a lot of bills that are going to pass in Congress over the next year. We want to make them as good as possible, and we want to make sure that there is a pro-growth agenda that is at the center of some of those bills. Not all of them are bipartisan. And so navigating that in a polarized and historically-challenging era is not easy, but we're working on that.

We’re also trying to make sure that we put some big flags in the distance on what we want to achieve over the long term.

We had Kamala Harris run for President on the agenda of building 3 million new homes, which sounded absolutely fantastic to me. The policy substance underneath that campaign promise, though, was pretty lacking. So, one of the things that we're trying to do is actually flesh that out.

What would it actually take to build 3 million new homes across a Presidential Administration?

What would it mean to unleash American clean energy in a way that we can actually get these projects built in, you know, months or a couple years as opposed to decades and centuries?

What would it mean to actually have high-speed rail, and to make sure that these projects don't end up mired in gridlock for decades on end, costing tens of billions of dollars without actually releasing or allowing any passengers to ride?

That's what we're trying to figure out. To make sure that we have an agenda that more folks can get onto, and that can serve as hopefully the centerpiece of a pro-growth agenda in the future.

We're doing a lot of roundtables. We're talking to a lot of experts. And we're really trying to make sure that all of the great bipartisan members -- some of whom you've had on -- are excited about this and are able to put their ideas on paper and hopefully get some stuff done.

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

Well, Congressman Harder, it is enormously exciting. Thank you for your leadership on this issue. Congratulations on the formation of the Build America Caucus!

As you build from here, know that every single YIMBY Democrat for America is right behind you and ready to fight alongside you to do whatever we can to Build America.

So, thank you for everything you've done so far, everything that you will do, and thank you for joining us today on Radio Abundance!

Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:

Thank you. And thank you for all your hard work!

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