In remarks on the House floor, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) spoke about San Francisco's decline and denounced "progressive" policies brought to the city by VP Kamala Harris and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Madam Speaker.
00:07I rise today with an update on the condition of San Francisco,
00:13a city whose fate has been largely shaped by several politicians of prominence here
00:23in Washington DC.
00:25Foremost among them, Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
00:33I think it's important for all Americans to understand the tragedy of San Francisco,
00:39what has happened to one of America's most beautiful cities, because the same radical
00:45failed policies that have caused San Francisco's decline and collapse are gaining increasing
00:52traction in Washington DC.
00:56So I want to go over just a few of the reasons why it is that, as the San Francisco Chronicle
01:01put it last year, this city is, quote, on the verge of collapse.
01:07Indeed, in many ways, my entire state of California offers a preview of where our country has
01:14been headed.
01:15But San Francisco offers an even starker warning.
01:20It is the part of our state where failed policies, radical politics, and public corruption
01:26are in their most advanced stage, and where residents are most rapidly fleeing.
01:32In an article headlined, San Francisco Falls into the Abyss, UCLA economics professor Lee
01:38Ohanian writes, quote, no major American city has failed at the same level as Detroit, whose
01:44population dropped from 1.85 million people in 1950 to about 630,000 today.
01:51Move over, Detroit, he writes.
01:53Here comes San Francisco, which lost 6.3% of its population between 2019 and 2021, a
01:59rate of decline larger than any two-year period in Detroit's history, and unprecedented among
02:06any major US city.
02:08The city is declining faster than any major US city in the history of our country.
02:15And the reasons are not a mystery.
02:17Foremost among them are crime, drug addiction, homelessness, waste, unaffordability, failing
02:24school, and failing schools, all a result of failed governance.
02:29So let's just start with the crime situation in San Francisco, which is a city that has
02:34had a progression of self-described progressive prosecutors, starting with now Vice President
02:41Harris, who has used that term to describe herself, progressive prosecutor, followed
02:47by others in her mold, George Gascon, and then Chesa Bodine, who was ultimately recalled
02:54from office by voters.
02:56Now on a state level, California law has essentially legalized many forms of crime, making theft
03:01of merchandise below $950 a misdemeanor, as well as the possession of even Class A drugs.
03:07In practice, this means offenders are rarely if ever prosecuted, and in many cases, businesses
03:13have stopped even reporting losses.
03:16San Francisco's anti-law enforcement policies have compounded these problems.
03:21For example, a few years ago in 2020, San Francisco defunded the police, shifting $120
03:27million away from law enforcement.
03:30If you park your car while in the city, the advice is just to leave the doors open and
03:35make sure there are no valuables inside.
03:37That will at least spare you the cost of replacing your windshield.
03:41Last year, the Castro Merchants Association, representing 125 business owners, wrote a
03:47scathing letter regarding the city's failure to address the lawlessness around them.
03:51One said, we're just seeing constant vandalism, constant drug use in public, people passed
03:56out on the sidewalk, people having psychotic breakdowns, and it's just not something a
04:00small business owner should have to deal with.
04:04On top of these general problems relating to crime, retail theft, car thefts, is the
04:09issue of drug use.
04:11Walking through San Francisco, you will see open drug use and drug dealing, with an open
04:16air drug market scene that is so rampant that even last year, Governor Gavin Newsom sent
04:22in the National Guard, ostensibly, to get it under control.
04:26While California has among the highest rates of illegal drug use in the country, San Francisco
04:31is well above the national average, with 22% of the population in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont
04:37area using an illegal drug in the last year.
04:41Tragically, the number of overdose deaths has skyrocketed from 222 to now 647 in a given
04:50year.
04:51It only got worse during the COVID shutdowns, as far more people in the city died from overdoses
04:55than from COVID.
04:57Facing among the most punishing lockdowns in the country, emergency room mental health
05:00visits increased substantially, especially for young people.
05:04It certainly doesn't help matters that the supply of drugs is so abundant, thanks to
05:08the crisis at our border, largely overseen by this administration's border czar, Vice
05:15President Kamala Harris, and it should be noted that San Francisco declared itself a
05:19sanctuary city long before California became a sanctuary state.
05:24On that note, the current Vice President also played a starring role when she was district
05:28attorney, abiding by the city's sanctuary policies, and then when she was the state's
05:33attorney general, she actually paved the way for California to become a sanctuary state
05:38by opposing a federal law meant to stop sanctuary jurisdictions.
05:45A third issue that one will confront immediately in San Francisco is homelessness, and this
05:50is very much connected to the crisis of crime, drug use, and mental health, the explosion
05:55of homelessness in San Francisco.
05:58Once again, while California leads the nation in homelessness, San Francisco is worst of
06:02all.
06:03Between 2005 and 2020, the number of homeless increased from 5,404 to 8,124.
06:11During that same period, homelessness declined significantly nationwide.
06:15Within a three-year span, complaints of homeless encampments to the city's 3-1-1 line increased
06:21from 2 to 62 each and every day.
06:25Meanwhile, the share of the homeless population that is unsheltered has also gone up in recent
06:31years.
06:32Fourthly, is the waste situation.
06:35Between 2014 and 2018 in San Francisco, calls about human feces doubled to 20,933.
06:44A hundred million dollars was spent on street cleaning in 2019 alone.
06:49In a three-year span, the city replaced 300 lampposts corroded by urine.
06:53The overall condition of many areas is something that no American should ever have to experience,
06:58especially kids walking to school.
07:02Speaking of kids, San Francisco Unified has the second widest achievement gap of any school
07:07district in California with over 5,000 students.
07:11A CalMatters investigation from 2017 found that San Francisco had the worst black student
07:16achievement rate of any county in California.
07:19Just 19% of black students in San Francisco passed the state's reading test, compared
07:23with 31% statewide.
07:26This was before COVID.
07:27While California was last in the nation in getting students back to school, San Francisco
07:31was worst of all, keeping schools closed not only in 2020, but through the end of
07:36the 2020-2021 school year.
07:38While they refused to actually operate schools, the district instead spent time on a commission
07:43to rename them, even proposing taking Abraham Lincoln's name off of an elementary school.
07:50The district then came up with a scheme to scam the state by pretending to open for the
07:53last two weeks of the school year in order to get millions of dollars in extra funding.
07:57Predictably, test scores have since plummeted even further.
08:01Citizens of San Francisco, by the way, responded by recalling three of the school board members
08:05from office, each by over 70% of the vote.
08:11A fifth issue is bureaucracy.
08:13It costs an estimated $100,000 to build one tiny home for the homeless, 10 times more
08:19than even other places in the Bay Area.
08:21Almost $1.2 million is the cost to build a single unit of affordable housing.
08:28This is the city where it takes 87 permits, 1,000 days of meetings, and 500,000 in fees
08:33to build residential housing projects.
08:36San Francisco politicians boast that they brought home the bacon when they acquired
08:41a $1.7 million taxpayer-funded toilet.
08:46As the San Francisco Chronicle puts it, San Francisco's bureaucracy isn't just incompetent
08:51and comically inefficient, it is a corroding force in our life.
08:54They say spiritually, yes, but also literally.
08:57They call it corruption born of needlessly complicated bureaucracy.
09:02The public transportation system is a model of mismanagement, with the Bay Area Rapid
09:06Transit facing a $1.1 billion deficit over five years, with cranes that are dangerous
09:11to ride and that rarely show up on time.
09:14No wonder ridership has plummeted, and they're projecting a $728 million deficit, this is
09:20for the city of the whole, over a span of two fiscal years.
09:24Finally, there's the cost of living.
09:26A survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit found that San Francisco is one of the ten
09:30most expensive cities to live in in the world.
09:34Average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is over $3,500.
09:38According to data from the California Association of Realtors, a San Franciscan needs to make
09:42nearly $400,000 to buy a median income home.
09:46The cost of utilities, groceries, and other goods is also well above the national average.
09:51The city has simply become unaffordable for far too many people.
09:56Now this is the political situation, this is the reality on the ground in San Francisco.
10:05And it is directly linked to the political culture of radicalism that has developed in
10:11that city over the course of the last, say, decade and a half.
10:16And what's truly alarming is that many of the people who have had positions of leadership,
10:23like Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, have assumed greater power over our
10:27state and over our country.
10:30Indeed, California has seen its own population decline significantly.
10:35In fact, we led the nation in outbound U-Haul rentals over the course of four years, as
10:40you saw many of those problems I just discussed for San Francisco start to become problems
10:46for the entire state, and are indeed now starting to become problems for the entire country.
10:52Now I personally believe it's not too late to turn that particular city around.
10:58And for proof, you can look at the communities of my district.
11:01While California as a whole is declining, and 53 out of 58 of its counties are declining,
11:07the vast majority of my district is growing.
11:09Placer County and Folsom, for instance, are growing as much as anywhere in the state.
11:13Our communities are rated among the best in California to live, raise a family, and retire.
11:18While California, as I said, leads the nation in U-Haul departures, Roseville is the second
11:23place city in the entire country in U-Haul arrivals.
11:28Many of the people leaving San Francisco, in fact, come to my district for safer communities,
11:32a more affordable cost of living, better schools, and an overall quality of life.
11:37We still face headwinds of misguided policies enacted at the state level, but we strive
11:42to use the tools of local governance and community partnerships to do what is best for our citizens.
11:47This is the model that our state should strive for, and it's the model that many other states
11:52are following.
11:53And it's the model for our country to reverse the policies that have gotten us so off track
11:58in three years.
11:59If we are going to get ourselves back on the right trajectory as a country, then we should
12:04indeed look to San Francisco as a model.
12:07But it is a model of precisely what not to do.