Why I Wrote This

I wrote this for a simple reason: before you vote, you deserve to know how your candidates think about solving problems. Too many members of Congress seem convinced that voters sent them to Washington merely to rail against the opposing party and to rant on TV. We have problems to solve.

Predictably, our political discourse suffers. Rather than facilitating public conversations about solutions, campaigns infantilize voters with slogans. Voters should demand more—and some do.

As a mayor, I was accountable to residents to solve problems. People rarely blame legislators for encampments, nearby burglaries, or potholes on their street. If they did, many legislators would just point at the other party, and say, “it’s their fault.” Residents hold their mayors accountable. Mayors must respond. Imperfectly or well, mayors do respond. Meanwhile, Congress dismisses national crises like homelessness, crime, education, and the high cost of utilities, housing, groceries, or insurance as mere “local concerns,” unworthy of their attention.

We need more leaders who act like mayors in Washington—and better ideas.

I’m not going to magically transform all or even most of my ideas into reality. We have a deeply divided Congress, but they are unified around the time-honored tradition that first-term members are better seen and not heard. Nor do I pretend that this comprises a comprehensive set of solutions. But I hope this book provokes more substantive conversations about solutions, to provide a refreshing counterbalance to the superficiality and negativity of the election season.

Finally, I wrote this. It wasn’t written by a consultant. Political consultants usually hate it when candidates get specific with proposals, because honesty and specificity invites criticism. Vagueness keeps opponents at bay, and voters in the dark. I benefited from research and editing from Bess Olshen and other former Stanford students of mine (see acknowledgements), but the unattributed ideas are mine—so you can blame me for them.

An Important Note About Balancing Budgets and Bipartisanship

Every election season, politicians in both parties parade proposals for government programs that sound great but lack any clear means to pay for them. The result: our current $1.9 trillion deficit.^[1] In addition to burdening future generations with more than $34 trillion in debt, deficit spending crowds out private borrowing, resulting in higher interest costs, and constraining future problem-solving.^[2]

Mayors, in contrast, have to balance budgets. If we have a new, brilliant idea, we have to find a way to pay for it—including cutting somebody else’s good idea. In my final year in office in 2022, I worked with our city team to leave my successor with a $30 million surplus,^[3] while San José reduced street homelessness by 11%^[4] and recorded the lowest homicide rate of any major U.S. city.^[5] That’s what people expect from mayors. We should expect the same from Congress.

Admittedly, some of my proposed measures will require more funding, such as expanding vouchers to address homelessness. For that reason, I’ve designed other proposals to provide budgetary savings, such as cutting agricultural subsidies, reforming Pentagon procurement, and reducing Medicare costs for pharmaceuticals.

The common theme is that we need to find bold solutions that both Democrats and Republicans can agree upon and support, within our budget. We have a divided Congress, and that reality will likely persist. As Mayor of a city of one million residents, I routinely reached out to people who disagreed with me to find common ground. From my first day in the Mayor’s Office, I had to resolve pension reform and budgetary battles that had left San Jose City Hall—already the most thinly staffed city hall of any major city—with 1,000 fewer employees. We spent the next year negotiating with eleven city unions on a pension reform measure, and voters approved the settlement in 2016 with Measure F. As a result, we’re now saving taxpayers $3 billion over the next two decades, while restoring services and city staff—with much higher salaries.

As with pension reform negotiations, I usually found that there was at least one goal that every key stakeholder could agree upon: the need to solve a problem.

What problems? We face many, but I focus my writing here on a few big ones:

1. Housing affordability
2. The high cost of living
3. Homelessness 
4. Crime
5. Our environment and climate
6. Reproductive rights
7. Defending democracy
8. Our innovation economy

Let’s discuss each in turn.

Acknowledgments

I did have lots of help, beginning with wise counsel and feedback from my wife, Jessica Garcia-Kohl, herself a graduate of UC Berkeley’s policy school. I’m grateful for Bess Olshen’s tremendous work in researching and editing this revised version of the book, and for coordinating enthusiastic student volunteer researchers. For the book we originally launched in February, credit goes to my friend, Matt Hammer, for coordinating a bright team of my former Stanford students who helped with the initial research and editing: Rachel Schten, Jose Luis Gandara, and Bess Olshen.

This book combines ideas for federal legislation that I’ve thought about during my time teaching at Stanford Law School, and as mayor. It also contains some of the better ideas I’ve stolen from people smarter than me. I’d like to thank them, including my former colleagues at Stanford University, Dr. John Donohue, Dr. Keith Humphrey, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, and Dr. Susanna Loeb; my sister and USC drug policy expert Dr. Rosalie Pacula; and former policymaking colleagues of mine, like Jennifer Loving (CEO of Destination: Home), Nathan Ho and Preston Prince (both of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority), and James Gibbons Shapiro (Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office).

Finally, I’d like to thank the hundreds of brilliant community members—venture capitalists, scientists, policy experts, and others—who helped advance my thinking, often unknowingly, about issues from climate mitigation to antitrust enforcement. I’ve learned much on the campaign trail by starting every conversation with a question—the same way I intend to govern.

1. “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034.” Congressional Budget Office, 18 June 2024. ↑
2. “Fiscal Data Explains the National Debt.” Understanding the National Debt, U.S. Treasury. ↑
3. Mahan, Matt. “March Budget Message for Fiscal Year 2023-2024.” City of San Jose, 13 Mar. 2023. ↑
4. Kadah, Jana. “San Jose Sees Small Drop in Homelessness.” San José Spotlight, 30 May 2023. ↑
5. Fox, Justin. “Pandemic Murder Wave Has Crested. Here’s the Postmortem.” Bloomberg, 3 Mar. 2023. ↑