Talking with Rep. Adam Gray

I think the most important thing to know about my district is it’s part of the largest agricultural valley in the world. Here in California, we produce two-thirds of the fresh fruit and vegetables that this country consumes.

I get to represent a good portion of that and take a lot of pride in what role we play in our country and making sure that everybody has high-quality, affordable food in every community. It’s funny, I’ll be in Washington, D.C., and I’ll go to the grocery store. And of course, some of the grocery stores will put where these fruits and vegetables…were grown. And a lot of it is in my district.

People, our farm workers, farmers, truck drivers, involved in food production, carpenters and plumbers and electricians, and people that really work hard, they deserve a government that works hard for them.

And I guess I think I probably reflect the views of a lot of middle America in that I think we’re all just kind of tired of political parties not working together.

And at the end of the day, what are we really talking about? You know, people say, “Oh, the Democrats are demanding things.” Well, what’s actually being demanded? I mean, I know what’s being demanded, healthcare tax credits, and why, so that come January, your premiums that you pay for your health insurance don’t go up. I would be hard-pressed if we could find anyone in a Republican or a Democratic district that doesn’t think that’s a good thing.

I guess my point is it seems like it’s pretty easy to compromise here, doesn’t it? Just sit down, extend the government funding so that hardworking folks are getting paid for the hard work that they do. And then let’s make sure that their health insurance bills don’t go up in a couple months. Let’s not give people a Christmas present of higher bills.

Well, look, here in the San Joaquin Valley in California, this is a very rural part of the state, and we have been underserved in relation to healthcare for my entire life. We don’t have as many doctors as the cities and the coasts have. We don’t have the same number of clinics and hospitals. We had a county here in my district, Madera County, that just recently had its only hospital close. So if you had a medical emergency or you were having a baby or any other need for a hospital, you had to literally go to a different county to get that service. And over 60% of the folks in my district are served in some way by what’s called the Medi-Cal program, which is funded by Medicaid.

Now in the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill, they cut Medicaid funding, slashed it significantly. In ways that these services aren’t going to be able to be provided to my constituents. And in addition, they failed to extend these premium tax credits to keep people’s premiums low. So what is the impact of that? Well, if you think about it, it’s just like any other business, a hospital fundamentally is a business. If 60% of their customers no longer have adequate funding to pay them, then that’s going to hurt everybody. Because what happens is more hospitals, more clinics close, less doctors find it profitable to have an office open in a rural community and they close those.

In my district…we’re trying to build a medical school program here, we’re trying to expand nursing schools at our community colleges, we’re trying to bring more healthcare professionals into an area that needs them. And now they’re doing this thing that’s going to set us back decades. And I opposed it. I voted no on it. And then I introduced a bill to restore the funding for Medicaid and protect the 60% of my community that’s on that program directly. And, of course, everyone else that’s going to be impacted by it. And I also included in that bill the extension of these tax credits because it just makes sense.

When people say, what are the three most important issues in your district, I always say, well, there’s water, there’s water, and there’s water. And I say that because, obviously, this is the largest agricultural valley in the world, and there’s nothing more important to producing food than water and the availability and the affordability of water.

In California, we’ve got one of the best water systems and one of the best innovations in the world that was built in the ’50s and ’60s.

But we haven’t kept up with it over the years, as it’s become harder to build public infrastructure and reservoirs and canals and the things you need. And as our country’s become more divided, sometimes folks on the environmental side said, “Oh, we can’t build any more dams.” And folks on the conservative side of the argument [are] saying we can only build dams and we can’t do anything for the environment. Of course, I’ve always said, “Well, I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.” I think we can have a healthy and wonderful environment. I think we can also make some targeted investments In more water storage.

The federal government hasn’t made significant investments like they did almost a half a century ago in California’s water infrastructure since that time. And it’s long overdue. So this year, I tried to amend the president’s Big, Beautiful Bill to add $8 billion for Western water and to make significant investments that would actually protect our ag economy and our food supply for the next hundred years.

When I offered that amendment to really solve California and Western water, every Democrat and every Republican voted against it. I was the only aye vote in the committee because people are too busy playing partisan politics.