LAST 2 WEEKS IN REVIEW

I’m your Representative in Congress and I write to keep you informed.

• Fighting for Medicaid against GOP cuts
• Launching the Build America Caucus to promote more housing
• Big ideas for the Democratic Party on The Daily Show
• Challenging bad actors in health care, from RFK Jr. to drug-pricing middlemen
• Meeting with New Zealand & Japanese emissaries to reassure them in the America First era
• Engaging with the Jewish and Chinese-American communities, both feeling threatened

Fighting for Medicaid against GOP cuts

27 hours defending Medicaid: Last week, I debated alongside my Democratic colleagues on the Energy & Commerce Committee for 27 straight hours, pushing back against GOP efforts to slash $715 billion from Medicaid. These cuts will jeopardize healthcare for over 100,000 Bay Staters in our district, as well as increase premiums and wait-times for those who get health insurance through their employer. When paired with the Trump tariffs, this administration is making life less affordable across the board.


Kicking millions of Americans off Medicaid does not save money for the U.S. health system. It just transfers costs onto families who need at-home care for elderly or disabled loved ones, or who get insurance through their employer. With the GOP's bill, those families pay more for healthcare, and the ultra-rich pay less in taxes. Furthermore, the policies within the GOP’s package will increase the national debt by more than $2 trillion and saddle the middle class with that bill through future inflation and tax hikes.

Countering Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” on Fox News: I explained the Democratic alternative to these tax and healthcare cuts to a Republican audience. I offered that Democrats would have supported a tax & spending reform bill that:

• Extended the 2017 tax cuts for the middle class
• Modestly raised taxes on the rich by 
  • restoring the marginal income tax rate for the top bracket (making well more than half a million a year) to 39.6% from 37%;
  • closing tax loopholes on inheritance & capital gains; and 
  • stepping up IRS enforcement (more than half a trillion dollars is uncollected every year)
• Reduced spending through fraud and abuse detection or by improving efficiency in programs that became bloated through pandemic-era spending

Standing up for community health centers: Community health centers deliver comprehensive, quality care to 10% of Americans while accounting for just 1% of total U.S. healthcare spending. Medicaid is an important funding source for them. Cutting that funding wouldn’t just harm the Americans who see their doctors at health centers—it wouldn’t even save money. It’s expensive to transfer healthcare delivery from an efficient site of care (health centers) to an inefficient site of care (emergency rooms). 


To object to Medicaid cuts that could cascade into budget shortfalls for community health centers, I invited Dr. Lisa Jones, CEO of HealthFirst Family Care Center, to join me in Washington. HealthFirst provides primary and mental health care to approximately 13,000 patients in Greater Fall River, about 57% of whom are insured through Medicaid. Dr. Jones helped me make the case against shortsighted policy that undermines community health centers.

The mathematics of mercy: On the House Floor, I recited a poem on “The Mathematics of Mercy” by Betsy Johnson, a Massachusetts mother and autism educator who relies on Medicaid to care for individuals with intellectual disabilities. We cannot, she writes, “price dignity like a luxury good.”

Launching the Build America Caucus to promote more housing

The launch of the Build America Caucus: To lower prices and strengthen America, the United States this decade needs to build five million homes, five Hoover Dams' worth of nuclear power, and more ships than the Chinese Navy. The status quo won't deliver that speed and scale, so Congress needs to take action and relieve bottlenecks in housing, energy, and maritime development. We must also propel science and technology by doubling research & development funding.


This month, I helped launch the Build America Caucus, which incorporates the ideas of the abundance agenda to get America inventing and building again. Congress should look to relieve bottlenecks in whatever form they take—whether red tape, lack of investment, market uncertainty, corporate monopoly, or underdeveloped technology. This administration is going backwards on all those fronts, increasing uncertainty and reducing investment in the future, and so I hope to use this bipartisan caucus to forge a durable counter to the MAGA approach of ‘getting stuff done’. 

Big ideas for the Democratic Party on The Daily Show

Pitching big ideas on The Daily Show: I sat down with Jordan Klepper, hot off of a 27-hour Medicaid markup where the GOP moved to gut Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

On The Daily Show, I laid out my bold vision for Democrats, including:

Surging 1:1, high-dosage tutoring for every student in America after the catastrophic pandemic school closures.

Levying an attention-fracking tax to make the social media companies pay for treating our children like products.

Building 5 million homes and the equivalent of 5 Hoover Dams’ worth of nuclear power to lower the price of housing & energy – the two critical bottlenecks to middle-class growth.

Getting tough on Big Tech, starting with TikTok: Frank McCourt, a former longtime Brookline resident and the founder of Project Liberty, met with me in Washington to discuss his efforts to reclaim voice and choice for individuals on social media platforms. McCourt and I share a deep distrust of the social media corporations, like Facebook, Snap, and TikTok, which are attention-fracking Americans.

Project Liberty has proposed to buy TikTok, in accordance with the bipartisan legislation I co-led last Congress to force TikTok's divestment from Chinese Communist Party control. While McCourt's vision is wide-ranging, the core of it is: 

(1) replacing manipulative algorithms with transparent methods of building community online, and 

(2) requiring portability and interoperability across platforms, so that creators and users don't get locked into one social graph.

The Trump administration continues to ignore the law directing it to force the sale of TikTok. I am helping build bipartisan pressure for compliance, and I support litigation against the app store platforms that continue to host TikTok despite the law.

Should Congress impose an 'attention-fracking tax' on social media platforms to fund one-on-one tutoring for public school students across the United States?

Challenging bad actors in health care, from RFK Jr. to drug-pricing middlemen

Pharmacists are fighting back: Independent pharmacists are not only trusted medical providers. They are small business owners who are fixtures of Main Street. They are getting clobbered right now by the health insurance corporations, which are self-dealing and price-gouging. Pharmacists are fighting back, and I’m proud to fight with them. I was honored to welcome Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency to Washington and to thank them for their advocacy on behalf of independent pharmacists across the country.

With their support, I am preparing to re-introduce my bipartisan Pharmacists Fight Back legislation, which will protect these small-business owners against corporate malfeasance and also lower co-pays for Rx drugs.

Defending the FDA from RFK Jr.: ​​In my interview at the Food and Drug Law Institute Conference, I made the case for protecting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from politically motivated, unscientific interference from the White House and the Secretary of Health & Human Services. Through my work on the Health subcommittee, I am trying to insulate FDA scientists from conspiracy and quackery.

There is the potential for bipartisan reforms to the FDA that improve transparency, accelerate innovation, and protect public health, but none of them are possible unless the commissioner and his two deputies demonstrate that, with congressional support, they will stand up to Secretary Kennedy on behalf of evidence-driven policy & regulation, particularly regarding vaccines.

Efficiency is about return on investment: I sat down with Healthcare Trailblazers to discuss RFK Jr., DOGE, and healthcare in America. I outlined the corruption of the Secretary and two of his closest advisors, who each have financial interests in healthcare that they are now regulating and reimbursing through their government positions. 

I also made the case for ‘return on investment’ as the proper frame for government efficiency. Fraud and abuse absolutely exist in the federal government, as with any big bureaucracy, and Congress, inspectors general, and the Justice Department should all take action to prevent that fraud and abuse. 

‘Waste’, though, has become a more divisive topic. DOGE apparently thinks that the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Pharmaceutical Quality Research at the FDA – to name just a few examples in healthcare – are ‘wasteful’ spending. 

Biomedical research and regulation, in reality, has a high return on investment. It improves health and standard of living. It creates opportunities for entrepreneurs and certainty for established companies. Cutting biomedical research and regulation is not efficient, it’s shortsighted.

Meeting with New Zealand & Japanese emissaries to reassure them in the America First era

Supporting the U.S.-New Zealand relationship: Her Excellency Rosemary Banks, New Zealand's Ambassador to the United States, met with me in my office in Washington for a substantive discussion on the alliance between our two nations. We reviewed Five Eyes (the intelligence-sharing pact between America, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia), AUKUS (the shipbuilding deal between America, Australia, and the UK), China and Taiwan, and our bilateral trade. I also learned more about Kiwi politics, healthcare, and housing. (Their housing costs strain millennials, too.)

My core message to our ally was: Stay with us, we will self-correct. Americans support our alliances, even if this president does not. The amateur and acrimonious behavior of this administration in diplomacy, from Signalgate to Ukraine to the tariff chaos, is testing the patience of our friends. Americans are getting fed up, too. 

Countering China in the Indo-Pacific: The Japanese Minister for Congressional Affairs, Ken Ono, met with me to discuss the alliance between Japan and the United States. I emphasized that ours is the most important bilateral partnership in the Indo-Pacific, with bipartisan congressional backing. We should deepen ties through ship maintenance and construction deals, expanded trade in services, and stronger security cooperation to deter and prepare for Chinese belligerence. 

Engaging with the Jewish and Chinese-American communities, both feeling threatened

Walking with Newton’s Chinese-American community: Newton's Chinese-American community celebrated AAPI Heritage Month with a 5K and fun run. Building on a decade of warm collaboration, since my days as a city councilor, I welcomed the chance to kick off the event along with the mayor and state representatives. The Chinese-American community is navigating both the general anti-immigrant actions of this administration, and the specific tensions of U.S.–China rivalry. 

Too many on the right conflate hawkishness on China with bullying Chinese-Americans. This is unacceptable. I have rejected targeted actions against Chinese-American researchers and will continue to stand with the community against any attributions based on their nation of origin. America has made this mistake before – with German, Italian, and Japanese immigrants, for example – and must not make it again.

Antisemitism has no place in our schools: I met in Washington with both the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States, and with 8th graders at Maimonides School, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school located in Brookline. In both conversations, I discussed my efforts with individual universities in Massachusetts, with the ADL, and with the United States Commission on Civil Rights, to address antisemitism on college campuses.

We must also address pedagogy and curriculum in K-12 public education, which in Massachusetts and other states has been under pressure by ideologues seeking to insert anti-Israel content and anti-Jewish tropes into teacher-facing or student-facing instruction. I was heartened by the Brookline School Committee's recent recognition of this problem.

Question: “Can the Democrats' message be focused on the economy and the federal debt?  Since the Republican party has totally abandoned fiscal responsibility, wouldn’t it be amazing (and a bit ironic) if the Democrats became the responsible party when it comes to fixing the unsustainable path (debt spiral) we are on.”

 - Dan, Medford

Answer: I agree! The last president to balance the budget was a Democrat (Bill Clinton), and the next president to do it should be a Democrat, too. MAGA’s tax cuts to top earners will add trillions to the national debt, which is increasingly crowding out funding for healthcare, defense, and investment. Already, just paying the interest on the debt (not paying down the principal) costs about as much as each of Social Security, Medicare, and the military. That is neither a wise nor sustainable path. Democrats must earn the trust of the American people on fiscal responsibility. 

A good start would be reducing deficits to less than 3% of gross domestic product. It’s about twice that, now. Cutting deficits by more than half would stabilize debt service, reassure the bond markets, and slowly reduce the overall debt, assuming long-term, even modest economic growth. 

There are, of course, myriad ways to cut the deficit. In my view, the approach should feature: (1) tax-code simplification, to improve efficiency and compliance; (2) modest tax increases on wealthy heirs, incomes above a half-million, and capital gains; and (3) spending cuts that tighten the screws on health insurance companies in Medicare Advantage, as well as thoughtfully reducing waste, fraud, or abuse across government. 

You can submit a question for a future newsletter here. Please note that casework inquiries for federal agencies must be submitted to my website here. My casework team will respond to these in a timely manner. 

Onwards,

Jake