Rep. Sam Liccardo, California Congressional District 16, spent Friday morning answering constituents’ questions, discussing the government shutdown and the importance of bipartisan relationships during last week’s Los Altos Community Coalition meeting.
Liccardo, elected to Congress in 2024, spent much of his campaign emphasising the importance of reaching across the aisle to get things done. During the government shutdown, which lasted 43 days, he said that’s what he was doing.
“I spent three weeks on the phone with between two and three dozen Republican colleagues trying to forge a compromise measure that enables us to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits to protect our district,” he said during the meeting.
More than 24,000 “critically depend” on the tax credits to be covered by health insurance in the district, Liccardo said.
Because the credits weren’t extended, premiums will double.
“We worked with many Republicans who were quite interested in (the compromise measure) because they understood the impacts on their district, and we stole some ideas from both the Republican side and the Democratic side to pay for it, primarily going after insurance companies that were gilding the lily,” he said.
Liccardo said he and his fellow representatives putting the measure together were ready to propose it when the shutdown ended.
The shutdown, caused by a lack of consensus in Congress regarding financial appropriations for fiscal year 2026, was the longest in the U.S. since the 1995-1996 21-day shutdown. The federal government is now funded until Jan. 30.
Liccardo said he’s still working to mitigate the strain the appropriations will cause. While the bill wasn’t introduced before the shutdown ended, Liccardo said it’s not done.
“It’s called the fix-it act, and we’re working now to try to see if we can expand the support, because this issue is far from over,” he said. “… We’re all going to be paying higher premiums as a result of the failure to extend these subsidies. Because whenever you’re pushing healthy young people out of an insurance pool, it means all of our insurance premiums are going to go up. And that’s a big problem.”
While the shutdown is over, Liccardo said there is a real risk of another happening in the new year. The issue was simply pushed to Jan. 31, he said.
“Other than the three areas of government for which we passed appropriation bills, there is another threat of yet another government shutdown, and this is a terrible way to run a railroad,” Liccardo said.
Currently, Liccardo serves on the congressional financial committee, which he said is a rare opportunity for frosh representatives. As part of the committee, he hopes to address issues some of his constituents have voiced on a larger scale.
“Financial services, as you might expect, covers banking, insurance and crypto and lots of other areas,” he said. “But in addition, an area that I’m particularly passionate about, it has jurisdiction over housing.”
Some of the bills Liccardo supported include reducing barriers to housing, he said, including those that are regulatory and financial. Most of those bills also have the support of some Republicans.
“We are in a deeply divided moment. We are getting nothing done. Congress is only punishing the country right now with its decisions and frankly, failing to stand up to what I view as authoritarian tactics by the president,” he said. And we need to start to build coalitions to both protect our democratic institutions and actually get something done for people.”
