Katie Porter

Why?

Because homelessness prevention programs take about $6,000 to prevent someone from losing a home.

Permanent supportive housing after someone's been on the streets for six months, that's $850,000.

So I'm absolutely looking at where do we need to shift our spending to give taxpayers more bang for a buck.

When I ran in Orange County, I don't think I've ever seen Orange County Republicans more mad at me than when I had lawn signs that said, Katie Porter, taxpayer advocate.

Because they're like, you can't be a taxpayer advocate.

You're a Democrat.

But we should all be taxpayer advocates.

People should feel like they're getting bang for their buck.

And Democrats should own that and lean into that.

And it doesn't mean you're taking services away from people.

It's the contrary.

You're saying, is this spending actually doing what we want it to?

And so if it's not, we got to redirect it to somewhere it is.

So I did not support the gas tax in 2018.

And so as we hear everybody sort of say, like, this is all Democrats' fault, it's like, I didn't support that gas tax.

And the reason I didn't support it back in 2018, that extra 12 cents, was it's deeply regressive.

It hurts low-income people who have to make long commutes with older cars.

You know, I got the 2010 Sienna.

It's not getting good mileage.