Hard & Soft Costs Are Driving the Housing Crisis

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We all know that California makes stuff expensive. I've been
ranting on the show. I've been ranting on the show
a lot the last month or so about costs of
doing things in California, how California has made policy choices
that make it expensive to build, expensive to do real

(00:22):
estate development, expensive to build new homes. We all know
that we need more housing, we need more construction, and
Democrats all understand the obstacles to it, and they refuse
to eliminate those obstacles because to eliminate those obstacles would
mean for them to have to repudiate some real sacred

(00:44):
cows and touch some taboos. They don't want to touch,
tick off people. They don't want to tick off. They
don't want to tick off the environmental groups. They don't
want to tick off the labor unions. And a lot
of this stuff is kept in place by labor unions
and environmental groups, and not really so much environmental groups,
but the billionaire donors who donate to the environmental groups,

(01:05):
whom Democrats don't want to cross. This is why gas
is so expensive in California. It's why energy is so
expensive in California. It's why construction takes so long. A
lot of California's big economic problems stem from these big,

(01:25):
obvious policy choices that California made that Democrats know are problems.
They know that the way to get around it is
to reverse those policies, and they don't want to do
it because they would rather have our current situation with
all of its problems than tick off those donors and

(01:48):
maybe lose elections, lose their jobs. Jason Ward, who is
the co director of the Rand Center on Housing and Homelessness,
wrote this piece that's in Calmatters calumatters dot org, which
is Dan Walter's California nonprofit news site, which is really good.

(02:10):
It's really of California covering media outlets. Calu Matters is
really one of the best. And Jason Ward writes this
piece about why is it so expensive to build affordable
homes in California? His thesis, it takes too long. This

(02:33):
was a fantastic piece. I really recommend you already it.
I'm going to go through it here on the show,
but it's I retweeted it from my Twitter account Twitter
dot com slash Fresno Johnny at Fresno Johnny or on X.
I'm never gonna get over the Twitter to X name change.
I just think X is such a worse name than Twitter,
all right, he writes. The spiraling cost of housing in

(02:54):
California has affected virtually every facet of life. California has
the nacious the nations just unsheltered homeless population, and among
the highest rates of cost burdened renters, and overcrowded homes.
One reason for the seemingly endless upward trajectory of rents
is how expensive it is to build new apartments in California.

(03:15):
Those costs are a major contributor to break even rents,
or what must be charged for a project to be
financially feasible. So rent is expensive because if a developer
is going to build something, he needs to know that
he's going to get enough revenue from a multi unit
dwelling to make the massive investment in the construction and

(03:38):
building costs worth it. So the rents have to be
set at this per big high rate. This guy, Jason Ward, writes,
I recently led a study that compared total apartment development
costs in California to those in Colorado and Texas. The
average apartment in Texas costs roughly one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to produce. In California, building the same apartment

(04:05):
costs four hundred thirty thousand dollars two point eight times more.
Let me repeat that an average apartment in Texas costs
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to produce one apartment
in California, the same apartment costs four hundred thirty thousand

(04:29):
dollars two point eight times more. Colorado occupies a middle
ground with an average cost of around two hundred forty
thousand dollars per unit for publicly subsidized affordable apartments quote affordable,
a sector that California has spent billions on in recent years.

(04:50):
The gap is even worse. These cost over four times
as much as affordable apartment units in Colorado and Texas.
There's no single factor driving these huge difference. Yeah, So again,
just to explain, in California, we have this designation for
what's called affordable housing units Okay, affordable, and basically it

(05:14):
means this is apartment dwellings that are designed for lower
income people to have access to and the state provides
subsidies to builders in order for them to build them.
But California has made it so expensive that these builders
like it has made it so expensive, and they have
all of these different like environmental requirements in this requirements

(05:36):
and labor unions mandating like like the costs of labor
has to be such and such a blabbah bah blah
blah blah blah, that the quote affordable housing units cost
enormous amounts of money like in many cases in California,
these quote affordable housing units cost far more than like
to construct than like a normal housing unit in Texas

(05:59):
would ever cost. All right, there's no single factor, Jason
Woodwrights driving these huge cost differences. Land costs in California
are over three times the Texas average. Hard costs, those
related to improving the land and constructing buildings, are two
point two times those in Texas, but California's soft costs,

(06:21):
which include financing architectural and engineering fees and development fees
charged by local governments, are three point eight times the
Texas average. There are some unavoidable California specific costs, like
ensuring buildings are resilient to shaking from earthquakes, but the
truly life saving seismic requirements explain only around six percent

(06:45):
of hard cost differences the market. The study estimated the
state's strict energy efficiency requirements at another seven percent. California's
high cost of living may drive up the price of labor,
but we found the construction wage differences explain only six
to ten percent of hard cost differences for market rate apartments. However,
for publicly subsidized apartment projects, which are often mandated to

(07:08):
pay union level wages, labor expenses explain as much as
twenty to thirty five percent of the total difference in
costs between California and Texas. Soft costs in California are
a major culprit. California property developers pay remarkably high fees
for architectural and engineering services, triple the average cost in Texas.

(07:31):
So he's sort of what he's trying to explain is, Look,
there are certain things that we can't one hundred percent
control in California that make construction more expensive. Okay, land.
You know, it's more desirable to live in La or
the Bay Area than it is to live in you know,

(07:52):
the Amarillo, Texas. Okay, so the land is more valuable.
That's part of the cost you have to make buildings
in many parts of California. You have to make the
buildings earthquake proof, not a problem in Texas. So those
are some hard costs that you can't really necessarily get around.

(08:13):
But environmental regulation and other quote soft costs, those are
the things we should focus on. The architectural fees, the
engineering services triple the average cost of what you have
in Texas. It's five times as much or more. If

(08:36):
you're building a publicly funded quote affordable apartment in the
Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas, seismic engineering requirements
play a role. The bigger factor are complex and burden
some design requirements for affordable housing. These are dictated by
state and local funding sources and have little to do
with habitability or safety, but contribute substantially to these astonishing differences.

(09:01):
So it's state regulation. It's state regulation that is making
construction like so expensive. But not to bring in my
own I thought I might as well. I'm hosting the
radio show bring in my own experience. When you have
the state regulating construction stuff, I feel like there is

(09:25):
because of the influence of labor unions, who are a
super powerful force in California politics. And you know, look,
I don't oppose the idea of labor unions, but certainly,
when labor unions are negotiating with the government for contracts,
the government that doesn't have the same kinds of incentives

(09:46):
as say, a private business does. When the Auto Workers'
Union is negotiating with FORD or GM, that makes sense.
The two sides have competing interests. The stockholders and ownership
of GM wants to keep as much of a profit
for itself as it can. The labor force at GM

(10:08):
wants to keep as much a profit for themselves as
they can in higher wages. They have competing interests. When
labor unions are negotiating against the State of California or
influencing lobbying the state of California, the state of California
has no big incentive to negotiate against the union. It

(10:31):
doesn't cost the State of California any money to have
really onerous construction requirements that result in bigger contracts for
labor unions that make them more money. For the labor
union's workforce that make them more money doesn't It's no
sweat off. The state of California is back. They're not
losing money necessarily, not in the short term. Anyway, maybe

(10:53):
in the long run, when there's no investment in California,
we have a financial crisis. But you see what I mean.
I mean this is the problem with labor unions negotiating
against the government. There's no conflicting interest and if anything,
the labor union winds up because the labor unions so

(11:13):
vociferously support Democrats and the Democrats need labors support. The
labor unions basically have both sides of the negotiating table.
So I've seen this in my own universe. You know,
when we were starting our Obria clinic, we were able
to kind of get around this regulation by being like
a satellite of another Obria clinic, but to start a

(11:33):
nonprofit community clinic. So a nonprofit clinic designed to serve
chiefly Medicaid patients, this sort of you know slot that
we fit in within California. You know, medical regulatory law.
Your chief building has to be built according to this
specific medical building code called OSHPOD three OSHPD three, And

(12:03):
it makes no sense. Basically, there's no real reason for
a nonprofit clinic like this that could be doing the
same things as a for profit clinic to have this
very elaborate building code and this is a very elaborate,
expensive building code to build up to no normal existing

(12:27):
medical office space is no good. Oh you're always four
and a half feet wide rather than five feet wide.
No good. You're plumbing is using cast iron plumbing rather
than sort of PVC type. Oh no, no good. You
know your HVAC system is circulating air a ba ba
ba ba ba amount rather than at this more expensive,
more difficult to achieve such and such rate. No good.

(12:51):
And every consultant I've talked to, every architect I've talked
to to ask why does the state mandate this building
code for a nonprofit clinic? The only answer I can
get is that it makes more money for the union.
The union had a role in influencing those regulations, and

(13:12):
they figure the more elaborate the building code, the more
work for construction workers, and the better the more the
labor union profits. And it's the same thing with low
income housing. The requirements are elaborate and ridiculous, and many

(13:37):
of them don't have anything to do. As this guy says,
as Jason Ward here right, who's again? This guy's a researcher,
the co director of the Rand Center for Housing and
Homelessness He's also an economist and a professor of policy analysis.
So this guy's this guy is saying, not me. This

(13:58):
guy's saying these requirements California has for low income housing units,
many of them don't have anything to do with, as
he says, habitability, the ability to like live there comfortably
or safety. It's just complication for the sake of complication
in a way that I think benefits labor because it's

(14:19):
more work to do, more money for them. Construction costs
go up and it's driven by labor. And look, I
want workers to make a fair wage. I'm not trying
to deny workers the opportunity for fair wage. But you
have to admit that there is a kind of imbalance

(14:39):
there when it's again the labor union negotiating, not with
a private business owner and two sides that both want
as much of the profit pie as they can get
with competing interests. No, it's the labor union negotiating with
someone that they already bought, the labor union owning both
sides of the table. And this is why this stuff

(15:02):
is never gonna change. I'm afraid change going through puberty
on the radio. This is why this stuff isn't going
to change. It's because organized labor is the most powerful
force in California politics period. End of sentence. I think
a lot of people have this sense that California liberal

(15:25):
politics is get dominated by you know, dope smoking hippies
or you know, left or even maybe kind of like
by Bernie Sanders socialists. No, no, no, no, California is
Democrat politics. Is labor union Democrat politics. That's what we are,
organized labor, chiefly public sector unions, but also private sector unions.

(15:51):
So that's why I'm sort of afraid that we're never
gonna fix the problem of housing affordability. Democrats all know
what the problem is. They all understand the problem is
the requirements that labor unions have on housing and the

(16:13):
requirements for environmental regulation. And we'll talk about SIQUA and
other environmental stuff that make things more expensive. But here's
the takeaway again, there are certain hard costs that make
construction in California more expensive. The land is more valuable,
you know, the land is more valuable in Los Angeles
than it is in Amarillo, Texas. You have to do,

(16:38):
you have to provide for you need to construct a
house in a way that's earthquake proof in many parts
of the state San Francisco, Los Angeles, you have to
make an earthquake proof house. You know, certain things are
hard costs, but the environmental costs and the state regulations,
particularly on affordable housing, other kinds of soft costs are

(16:58):
way higher. When when we return, we'll talk about why
it just takes so much longer to build one the
same building that takes a year to build in Texas.
Why does it take so much longer to build in California.
That's next on the John Girardi Show. Reading more of
this piece from Jason Ward, the co director of the

(17:19):
Rands Center on Housing and Homelessness. He's a professor of
public policy and an economist, and he's talking about why
is it so expensive to build in California? And he's
going over Basically, he's trying to divide it up between
hard costs, which is things that are just sort of
difficult or maybe well nigh impossible for California to change.
Hard costs include things like you have to make buildings

(17:43):
earthquake proof in California. You don't have to do that
in Texas you have to. You know, the land is
more expensive on the whole in California than it is
in Texas. You build something in Los Angeles, like Robert Kennedy,
Jon your you have to build some thing in Los Angeles,
that piece of dirt is way more expensive than something

(18:04):
in Amarillo, Texas. It just is. But there are soft costs.
The soft costs, the kinds of compliance costs mandated by
the state, the kinds of engineering fees you have to pay,
architectural fees you have to pay are way way higher

(18:25):
in ways that are totally disproportionate to any actual need.
And we then get to time. So one of the
big problems is how long it takes to build something

(18:48):
in California versus how long it takes to build something
in Texas. Here's what Jason Rand writes. A privately financed
apartment building that takes just over two years to produce
from start to finish in Texas would take over four
years in California. It takes twice as long to gain
project approvals, and the construction timeline is one point five

(19:09):
times longer. That means land costs must be carried for longer,
equipment and labor are on job sites longer, and that
loans are taken out for a longer term and so on.
So I mean, so you know, let's just think about that.
You buy a plot of land, maybe you have a

(19:29):
certain amount down and a certain amount you know, you're
paying an interest. You got to pay that on a
non revenue generating plot of land for much longer in
California than you do in Texas. You have workers working

(19:50):
on a job site for four years, that's going to
cost you way more than workers working on a job
site for two years. Have equipment on the job site
for four years, it's going to cost you way more
than equipment on a job site for two years. Most
of the differences that the study uncovered that this study

(20:13):
that he was talking about about time differences. Cost differences
between California and Texas stem from policy choices made by
state and local governments. Many are legacies of the so
called slow growth movement in California, which has shaped housing
production since the nineteen eighties. Those efforts worked, population growth

(20:33):
in the state, wit state went negative for a few
years after twenty twenty, due primarily to the high cost
of housing. Even more recently, California's growth was half the
numbers seen in Texas and Florida, with younger and higher
earners disproportionately leaving. These departures have dire implications for the
state's fiscal future and political influence nationally. California recently lost

(20:54):
a congressional seat for the first time in history. If
current national population trends hold, it could lose four or
five seats in twenty thirty. The California legislature has become
increasingly focused on reducing the cost of living, but meeting
this goal requires substantial progress on lowering housing costs. New
proposals to exempt urban infill housing production from state environmental

(21:18):
law and a package of permitting reforms are steps in
that direction. When we return, we'll talk about sequel and
how that fits in and again sort of this dynamic
that democrats all know what the problems are, they just
refuse to fix them. That's next on the John Jrardy Show.

(21:38):
We just read through this great piece from calmatters dot
org written by Jason Ward, who's an economist and a
public professor of policy analysis, and he's writing about why
does it take so why is it so expensive to
build in California? And he actually breaks down the reasons
and he divides things between hard costs. Some stuff in

(22:00):
California's just going to be more expensive than stuff in Texas.
California has more earthquakes. You have to account for that
when you construct projects in California. The land is more valuable.
It's more desirable to live in Los Angeles than it
is to live in you know, the middle of the
plains in Amarillo, Texas. But a lot of the costs
is soft costs. It's stuff that is really just the

(22:24):
fruit of california public policy choices, some of which really
doesn't even have much to do especially you know he's
talking about, you know, publicly subsidized lower income housing units.
A lot of the reasons why it costs so much
to so much more to build lower income housing in
California versus Texas is just a bunch of state regulations

(22:48):
that don't even really have anything to do with safety
or habitability, the ability to dwell in the place. It's
just state regulation. And my thesis is, as I've seen
in the context of me trying to build medical things,
I really think labor unions want things that are more

(23:11):
expensive and difficult to build. It'll affords them more opportunity,
more work, a longer project, more money, more jobs. And
I don't know that even individual laborers like that. I
don't know that individual laborers like this idea that we

(23:32):
don't have enough construct I mean, I don't know in
the long run if it even helps organize labor to
have all of these require all of these onerous, expensive
requirements for you know, a project that takes two years
to construct in Texas. You want to build a big
apartment complex in Texas, It'll take you two years in Texas,
takes you four years in California. Is that really what

(23:53):
an individual laborer wants? I mean, I would think maybe
individual laborers would want, Hey, let's knock this thing out,
let's get this done, let's go to the next project,
and let's have an economy in which people, in which
investors are willing and developers and builders are willing to
invest in, develop and build, rather than the current situation
where it's so expensive, it takes so long, there's so

(24:17):
much risk, there's so many costs that developers and construction
entities have to carry for such a long time that
it's disincentivizing them from investing at all. I mean, I
met a guy I was at a conference in DC

(24:38):
last month, I met a guy who did basically electrical
stuff for medical facilities. He was based in Texas, so
he works at the design phase. He said, there are

(24:59):
forty nine states I am willing to work with, I'm
willing to work in. I'm willing to work on projects
in forty nine states. There is one state I will
not work in. It's California. He says. The regulations are
too insane, they are too extreme, it takes way too long. No,

(25:22):
just not doing it. And then this is a guy
who's doing, like, you know, big time medical projects, doing
all the electricity, all the electricity for these big time
medical projects. No, he doesn't want to do it. He
doesn't want to do it. I mean, that's astounding. Why
are we the one state you don't want to invest in,

(25:44):
you don't want to work in. And it's because of
policy choices. And this is this is why I feel
a little negative. Let me let me see if I
can land this plane. Let me see if I can
give the negative and maybe something positive. Here's the negative.

(26:06):
Democrats know what all these problems are. The Democrats who
control three quarters of all the seats in the California
State Legislature, who control the governorship. Democrats who have not
lost a statewide election in California since Arnold Schwarzenegger was
elected for his second term in two thousand and six.

(26:28):
Democrats who have continuously held every single statewide office since
January of twenty eleven. Who who don't have just a
super majority in the state legislature. In California, you need
a two thirds majority in the Assembly and the Senate
in order to increase taxes or to propose state ballot initiatives.
They don't have a two thirds majority. They have a

(26:49):
three quarters majority. Right now. Democrats in Sacramento have exactly
a three quarters majority. They have sixty of the eighty
Assembly seats. They have thirty of the forty state Senate seats.
They can do whatever they want. They are completely in
control of our public policy. They know all these problems.

(27:16):
But the problem is their most important backers and supporters benefit,
at least in the short term, benefit from the arrangement
we have. Organized labor is the most powerful force in
California politics. I can't emphasize this enough. It is the

(27:39):
prism through which you have to view all of California politics.
Is an understanding that organized labor is the most important
force in all of California politics. So much so in fact,
that we've now gotten to the place where in instead

(28:00):
of the normal arrangement of oh, okay, here's organized labor
and they go to a politician and say, hey, we'll
give you political contributions, and we'll give you you know,
we'll encourage our voter, our you know, members to get
out the vote and support you and endorse you and
blah blah, you know, and we'd like you to vote
for our you know, as long as you vote for
our stuff. And the politicians say, okay, sounds good. They've

(28:24):
progressed beyond that. What organized labor has gotten to now
is just running labor union officials as the candidates for
seats in the State Assembly in the state Senate. Maybe
the woman who was the most one of the most

(28:44):
powerful members of the State Assembly for her twelve years
in office, Lorena Gonzales, was from San Diego. This is
the woman who wrote what is it, the state law
that sort of re redid everything with California law about
part time employees versus independent contractors. Basically said, no, all

(29:05):
these people that you would have categorized as an independent
contractor now you have to make them part time employees,
and there was a huge problem because that was going
to screw up like the whole business model for Uber
and Lyft. She was the head of the Assembly Appropriations Committee,
which basically gives it yay or nay, thumbs up or

(29:29):
thumbs down for every bill in the California Legislature that
spent money. So she was maybe one of the most
powerful people in California politics after like the governor. It
was the governor, her and the guy from the Senate
Appropriations Committee. Okay, she probably wields as much power as

(29:49):
like the Speaker of the Assembly, or maybe just a
little less. She was a labor union official before she
ran for office. She she was a labor union official
after she was done with her twelve years and was
term limited out. Organized labor gets the They get their

(30:09):
own people to run these seats. They cut out the middleman.
They don't even need to, you know, pay off somebody
with you know, political support and campaign contributions. I'm not
saying they're bribing people, but just in the normal way
that lobbying entities influence politicians, they don't even have to
do that. They've cut out the middleman. They just run
their own people for these offices. That is how thoroughly

(30:33):
organized labor controls this state. And similarly with environmental groups.
Some of these big time billionaire donors that give to
Gavin Newsom, that give to Democrats, they're all donors to
these big time environmental groups. So if a Democrat for years,

(30:54):
if a Democrat proposed the idea of hey, you know,
why does it take so long to construct a building
in California, Well, part of it is sequel the California
Environmental Quality Act, which requires this really long, really onerous,
really difficult approval process, especially for the environmental impact study.
You have to do this big, elaborate environmental impact study,

(31:18):
which takes a long time, it's very expensive to make,
and there's always the possibility that it could get challenged
with a private lawsuit from some random yahoo who might
not even be directly impacted by it. Some random nonprofit
organization can sue and grind your whole development project to

(31:38):
a screeching halt. When you're investing the you know, tens
of millions of dollars it takes to build an apartment complex,
you have to factor that risk into what you're doing
the time it takes to get those approvals, and the

(32:02):
possibility that a lawsuit could come around that could grind
your whole project to a halt, and time is money.
You're sitting around waiting for a lawsuit to get resolved.
You've got land that you spend a bunch of money
on that's not generating you any income, and that maybe
you still have to pay a mortgage on it or

(32:25):
whatever the loan on it. You've got loans you gotta pay.
You've got all this stuff going, and you're generating no
income for a much longer time than a similarly situated
developer builder in Texas would be. California knows that's the problem.

(32:45):
The sixty Democrats in the state Assembly, the thirty Democrats
in the state Senate, they're not all dummies. They know,
they understand. Gavin Newsom is not a total idiot. He
understands the problem. Not a dummy. They just don't want
to fix it. They don't want to fix it because

(33:06):
they don't want to tick off labor unions. A labor
union that says, oh, so this massive project it could
if we have this kind of regulation, it could cost
you know, it'll take four years to construct and our
workers have a four year like labor contract basically, or
it can just take two years and we only have
a two year labor contract. M I know what I'd

(33:27):
rather have, And this is kind of why I despair
when we return the only solution, the two edged sword
of direct democracy. Could ballot initiatives fix this? Next on
the John Girardi Show, how do we fix the problem?

(33:51):
How do we fix the problem that it is so
expensive to build in California. It's so expensive to build
in California, and it's costs that are within our control,
soft costs as we put it that, Yes, I understand
it's going to be more expensive to build in Malibu
than it is in Amarillo, Texas because the land that

(34:12):
you build on is more valuable. More people want to
live in Malibu, all things being equal, would rather live
in Malibu than would live in Amarillo, Texas. Okay, that's
a hard cost. We can't change that. A building in
Malibu needs to be a bit more earthquake proof than
a building in Amarillo, Texas. Okay, we can't. We can't
change that. We can't avoid that. That's a cost that

(34:34):
you're going to have. But what about the soft costs.
What about the costs that are there only because they
are creations of California regulation motivated by labor unions wanting
longer contracts, more work, more money for labor. Although, and

(34:55):
frankly though, I don't even know if in the long
term it's even beneficial for workers, because I would imagine
it's good for workers if lots and lots and lots
of investment and lots and lots of construction projects are
happening all up and down the state. If we were
building all throughout California at the rate that they're building

(35:18):
stuff in Texas, labor would have plenty of work and
plenty of jobs and plenty of money. We'd all be
doing better. Maybe individual workers would have lower cost of
living because housing could be maybe a little bit more affordable.
Here's my only thought for what could fix it. The

(35:42):
ballot initiative system. Now, the ballot initiative system is a
two edged sort. As it's been used in California, it's
been sort of a fantastic demonstration of why the Founding
Fathers were pretty darn leary of direct democracy. The Founding

(36:02):
Fathers did not like democracy. They did not found a
democracy They didn't like Athens. They liked Rome, they liked
the Roman Republic. They wanted a republican system where it
wasn't just directly whatever the people wanted. Yes, there was
respect for the people, but the whims of the populace

(36:27):
as a whole, the winds and waves of emotion and
all that the founding fathers firmly believed had to be checked,
had to be checked by more oligarchic systems of government
like the Senate, had to be checked by maybe instead
of direct vote by the people, having representatives represent them
and vote on stuff. That's what our legislatures are. And

(36:51):
they even thought there were some benefits to monarchic rule.
That's why in America we have governors, one man who
controls a lot of aspects of policy in law enforcement
within an individual state, a president, one man rule. That's
what monarchy means, one man monos archy rule. Direct democracy

(37:12):
has yielded some good things and some really bad things.
High speed rail, let's not forget a majority of you
people voted for it. Don't blame me, I didn't vote
for it. That fateful too. The two thousand and eight election,
we elected Barack Obama in California. We voted for the
high speed rail and we define marriages between one man

(37:33):
and one woman. What a trip. But here's the thing
why I'm talking about direct democracy. When it comes to housing, construction,
costs of living, Democrats are never going to fix those
problems because they have a vested political interest in keeping
those problems afloat. The big time groups that give them

(37:54):
big time money and keep them in their jobs don't
want a lot of those things changed, and so Democrats
are not going to change it. I think the only
way it gets changed is with ballad initiatives, and we'd
need Republicans with enough money to fund those kinds of
ballad initiatives. Seems like seems unlikely that that's going to happen.
That'll do it. John Die already show see you next

(38:15):
time on Power Talk