Vice President JD Vance speaks at the National League of Cities’ Congressional City Conference in Washington, D.C.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you all.
00:19Please, please take a seat.
00:23It's good to see everybody.
00:25Good afternoon and thank you all for having me.
00:27Thank you to Councilman Kramer for the kind introduction.
00:30I was talking with him backstage a little bit.
00:32My wife and I both love the city of Louisville and have spent a lot of time there.
00:36So thank you for being here.
00:37It means a lot.
00:38And thanks for the kind words.
00:41And I'd say to all of you, you know, whenever I was in the Senate and I welcomed a group
00:45from Ohio, and I know you guys represent the entire country or cities and municipalities
00:49all over the country.
00:50You know, I would always just say, enjoy the town because it is your city.
00:55And I think that Washington is a beautiful place.
00:58It's a beautiful place to spend a few days.
00:59I know you guys have some work to do, but I also think it's important to get out there
01:03and see the people's city.
01:04It was built with your tax dollars.
01:05I think these incredible buildings and museums are supported by all of you and of course
01:10by all the people that you represent.
01:12And so I hope you enjoy your time in Washington, D.C.
01:15So I know you're all busy, and I know it's never easy to come here to Washington, especially
01:20on a Monday.
01:22So I appreciate the effort involved in getting here, and I also appreciate the mission of
01:27this conference.
01:29The work you all do back home is extremely important.
01:32You know, most Americans, of course, they interact with their state and local governments
01:35far more regularly than they do their federal government, and that's the way it's supposed
01:40to be.
01:41That's the way the Constitution sets it up.
01:43We know that good government starts at the local level.
01:48So while those of us in Washington certainly take up most of the press attention, and we
01:59do that whether we want to or not, I want to acknowledge the enormous impact local governments
02:04have on the lives of our great American citizens.
02:08Now the Trump administration believes in the wisdom of federalism and leaving local issues
02:14to local officials.
02:17But we also recognize the importance of supporting and collaborating with all of you, because
02:27so many of the issues that you deal with, of course, implicate local issues, but state
02:32issues and federal issues as well.
02:34And one area of shared interest between President Trump and I think every single person in this
02:39room is the importance of providing good housing for our citizens at a reasonable and
02:44affordable cost.
02:46And I have to say, I'm hard-pressed to think of a time in my 40 years of life where it's
02:52been so hard for normal American citizens to afford a home.
02:56Even renting a home has become a challenge, or worse yet, fallen completely out of reach
03:02for so many of our families.
03:04I was talking with a relative a couple of years ago, and she just made kind of an offhanded
03:08observation as a younger person than I am.
03:11She was looking to buy her first home and just mentioned that when her parents were
03:16growing up, they could afford a nice home on a single middle-class income.
03:21And she was sort of mentioning this as a sorrowful thing.
03:25She was sad that that wasn't true for her generation.
03:28And I think all of us in this room, certainly including me, have a little bit more work
03:32to do, I think, to make housing more affordable.
03:34I want to talk about that because I think it's the issue where our interests in some
03:38ways are most aligned with the people in this room.
03:41I read recently that the average income it takes to buy a new house is nearly two times
03:47the average salary of your typical American family.
03:51Not the average American worker, but the combined incomes of a husband and wife, and that's
03:56just not acceptable or sustainable in the United States of America.
04:00We want Americans to be able to afford the American dream of homeownership because we
04:06know that when people own their homes, it makes them a stakeholder.
04:10It makes them a stakeholder in their neighborhoods, in their cities, and ultimately, of course,
04:15in this country that all of us love so much.
04:18We want our citizens to feel that investment in their own country, and it's hard.
04:23It's hard to feel that investment if you feel like you can't even own a slice of it, even
04:27if that's what you want to do.
04:29Now, on a more basic level, we don't want people living paycheck to paycheck.
04:35We don't want them to make trade-offs between a trip to the grocery store and meeting next
04:40month's rent, because even if you don't yet own a home, or even if you don't ever want
04:46to own a home, the knowledge that if you work hard and spend wisely, eventually you'll be
04:51able to afford a nice place to live, that goes, I think, a very long way to giving people
04:57a sense that they belong here and a sense that they have a stake in the future.
05:02Now, there are some important reasons why that belief is dwindling among Americans today,
05:09and a lot of it, of course, comes from the historic inflation that this country has dealt
05:12with over the last four years.
05:15Now under the previous administration, to get a little bit political, the cost of a
05:19median price home in America more than doubled, and that was just in four years.
05:24And if your salary didn't keep pace with inflation and rise 20%, your buying power took even
05:31a bigger hit.
05:32And of course, if you think about this, if the price of a home doubles and your actual
05:37salary doesn't double, then you're a lot worse off.
05:41And we know that most Americans did not see their salary double over the last four years.
05:46So it's no surprise that home sales hit a 30-year low in 2024.
05:52Now, another reason for the elevating costs comes down to zoning.
05:57And the reality, as you all know, is that zoning is an area where federal authority
06:01is actually quite limited.
06:03And I'm sure none of you want the federal government in the business of mandating how
06:07cities and towns handle local laws, and that's certainly not what we want to do either.
06:11But I would ask everyone in this room is to be good partners with us, and certainly partners
06:16with your citizens, and think about how we can improve the costs of our, excuse me, the
06:21costs of housing for our citizens.
06:24And I think one of the ways that we're going to have to do that is by being a little bit
06:27smarter about our local zoning rules.
06:30In particular, when I think about zoning, I can't help but think about it without, of
06:34course, the communities that I know best, which are those that I represented in the
06:38state of Ohio.
06:39And Columbus, Ohio in particular, I assume we've got some Columbus people here.
06:43And Columbus is a boomtown in so many ways.
06:46I've got relatives and family members who live there who love Columbus.
06:51It's a magnet because it's had so much economic development.
06:54But one of the things that I worry about when I look at a city like Columbus or Miami, which
06:59became a boomtown during the COVID years, is the unaffordability of housing.
07:05And we've got to fix that.
07:07If we actually want these places to be magnets, not just for jobs and investment, but also
07:11the dreams of our young people, we've got to actually make it easier to build homes.
07:15And in particular, I think the city of Austin has done a pretty interesting job.
07:20Because in Austin, you saw this massive increase of people moving in.
07:23The cost of housing skyrocketed.
07:26But then Austin implemented some pretty smart policies and that brought down the cost of
07:31housing.
07:32And it's one of the few major American cities where you see the cost of housing leveling
07:35off or even coming down.
07:37Now, the Trump administration has taken important steps to make building cheaper and to boost
07:43the supply of housing.
07:44Now, of course, it's going to take time.
07:47But this is a day one issue for our entire team from the president on down.
07:52On his first day in office, the president issued an executive order making it a priority
07:55to bring down prices for new buyers.
07:58Now, part of that will come from slashing needless regulations, which, according to
08:02some estimates, account for about 25% of a new single family bill today.
08:08We've also seen Secretary Turner, our great Secretary of Housing and Urban Development,
08:12is working hard on this issue, cutting some of the Biden rules at HUD that hike costs
08:17and shift the decision making from local governments to Washington, D.C.
08:23And Secretaries Burgum and Wright, and certainly Administrator Zeldin at the EPA, are putting
08:28in important work to bring down the cost of energy, which is, of course, a critical input
08:34to the cost of building a home, to say nothing, of course, of heating one and keeping its
08:38lights on.
08:40But I actually want to focus on something a little bit different, because I think this
08:43is one of the areas where what the Trump administration can do and has done is going to be one of
08:49the major drivers of bringing down the cost of housing.
08:52Now, local zoning, regulations, the cost of energy, these things are about the supply
08:58of housing.
08:59How do we get more houses out there to be built?
09:01But I think it's important to talk about the demand side of the housing market.
09:05And so much of what we're doing in the Trump administration when it comes to the immigration
09:10issue is framed about law enforcement, about reducing fentanyl coming into our communities.
09:15And that is true.
09:16That is a big part of why we're doing what we're doing at the border.
09:20But when we talk about housing and why costs are so high, we don't talk enough about demand.
09:26And one of the drivers of increased housing demand, we know, is that we've got a lot of
09:32people over the last four years who have come into the country illegally.
09:37And that's something we have to work on if we want to meaningfully reduce the cost of
09:41housing, too.
09:42Now, just think about this.
09:44If you allow 20 million people to compete with American citizens for the cost of homes,
09:51you are going to have a large and, frankly, completely preventable spike in the demand
09:57for housing.
09:59And that is what we, of course, have seen.
10:01Because while we've made it a little bit hard to build homes in this country over the last
10:04four years, we've also, unfortunately, made it way too easy for people to compete against
10:10American citizens for the precious homes that are in our country to begin with.
10:15Now, I'll say this.
10:16It's actually not just an American problem, either.
10:20If you go to Canada, where because of their laws and regulations, they've seen a massive
10:25increase in the number of people who have come into their country.
10:28You go to the United Kingdom, you go across the world, and you see a very consistent
10:34relationship between a massive increase in immigration and a massive increase in housing prices.
10:44And we have to be honest about that.
10:46Well, I see, I see, I see, I see one of our nice representatives out here wants to actually,
10:55I guess, continue to flood the country with illegal immigrants, making your communities
11:00and citizens unaffordable.
11:07But ma'am, with all respect, one of the reasons why we're doing what we're doing is because
11:12we want to make it more affordable for Americans to live.
11:17That is one of the reasons why we're doing what we're doing.
11:19Now, last week, I visited the southern border, and we decided to check in on what's going
11:25on there at the southern border.
11:28And of course, like I said earlier, you often hear about immigration enforcement as about
11:32crime and about drug trafficking, and that is a big part of it.
11:36I was at Eagle Pass and I was talking to local border control down there, and they told me
11:41that in just a matter of weeks, their small part of the border had gone from 1,500 daily
11:48encounters to less than 30.
11:51And again, that's in a matter of weeks.
11:53That's just a simple matter of common sense border enforcement.
11:57That matters.
12:09And let's talk about why it matters.
12:10I mentioned housing, but one of the things I heard down there, I was talking to the mayor
12:15in that community, and he said it's incredibly stressful on local resources.
12:21It's stressful on their local hospitals.
12:23It's stressful on their local schools to have this massive increase.
12:27And so while, look, I recognize there's a diversity of opinions here, clearly there
12:31is, I also think it's important to be honest about those disagreements, to acknowledge
12:36those disagreements, but to say that the reason why we care about border security is because
12:42we want your communities to be safer.
12:45We want them to be more affordable.
12:47We want there to be less drugs in our country, and we want your citizens to be able to live
12:52the American dream.
12:53It is the birthright of every single one of our citizens, and we're going to fight for
12:57it every single day.
13:15So with all due respect for some of the disagreements and opinion, I'd say we welcome disagreements.
13:22We want to talk about those disagreements, but we also have to respect the law in the
13:28United States of America.
13:30And I can tell, and I can tell you that yes, of course, you're going to disagree with some
13:42of our policies.
13:43That's okay.
13:44Come and tell us when you disagree with our policies and we'll have a conversation about
13:47it.
13:48Maybe don't shout it in front of 2,000 people.
13:52I can't even hear what you're saying, sir.
13:58But importantly, on this question of immigration, we have to recognize that yes, you can disagree
14:06with some of the laws that are in place.
14:09You can disagree with the enforcement of those laws.
14:12You can even vote for people who want to change those laws.
14:16But while we have immigration laws on the books, we will enforce them and we expect
14:21our local municipalities to help us.
14:32So it will be the policy of the Trump administration to enforce the nation's laws and it will be
14:37the policy of the Trump administration to say that it is not up to local cities to choose
14:43which federal laws that they're going to enforce.
14:46It's important.
14:47We can't do immigration enforcement with sanctuary cities.
14:50You've got to have everybody respecting the law and that is going to be one of the major
14:54policy focuses, of course, of the Trump administration and it already has been.
14:59I want to just say one final point about this issue of housing and of the strains that immigration
15:07and illegal immigration in particular put on our housing stock.
15:12We know from economists that blue collar folks are often those who face the biggest cuts
15:19in wages and in services when you have communities overwhelmed by illegal immigration.
15:25I come from a blue collar family and I think one of the main drivers is that we need to
15:31be able to give our citizens black, white or whatever skin color, whatever belief system
15:37that they have.
15:38If you are an American citizen, you deserve to have a government at the local city and
15:44federal level that fights for the American dream for you.
15:47And we've seen, and we've seen, yes, over the Biden administration, but let's be honest,
15:58over 40 years of American policy, we've seen a lot of our blue collar Americans, urban
16:04and rural, struggling, struggling to afford a home, struggling to raise their kids in
16:09safe communities, struggling to look to the future with hope and optimism.
16:14And so with all respect for policy disagreements, I think that one thing that unites us in this
16:20room is that we want to give our blue collar people in the United States of America a shot
16:26at the American dream again.
16:28We may disagree about how exactly to do it, but let's do it together.
16:33Let's fight for our people together and let's reinvigorate the American dream for the American
16:38citizen once again.
16:44And let me, let me close here with just an acknowledgement here that I know you guys
16:53have some of the hardest jobs in government, Democrat, Republican, or nonpartisan.
16:59You guys are the ones, of course, who fix the potholes.
17:02You guys are the ones that make sure our local police have the funding that they need.
17:05Our local firefighters are able to do the incredible job that they do.
17:10So I just want to let you know from the Trump administration, from the president, the vice
17:14president and everybody else, we respect what you do.
17:18We are impressed by you.
17:19We think you guys are doing a great job and we want to make sure that you have a presidential
17:25administration that is making your lives easier and not harder.
17:29So please consider, consider our administration one with an open door.
17:34Please come to us when you have issues.
17:37Even if you don't like what we're doing on the policy, you guys have got to be able to
17:41come and talk to us.
17:42So keep doing a great job, keep doing what you're doing, enjoy the rest of your time
17:47in Washington.
17:48God bless you guys and thank you for doing a great job.