Josh Harder

Josh was motivated to run for Congress due to his brother being born with a pre-existing condition. Since then, Josh has stuck true to his mission and fought for lower prescription drug prices and universal healthcare. Additionally, with an abundance of environmental catastrophes in California last year, he focused a lot on clean air and water in his district and around the country!

If you live in California, you shake your head every time you fill up your gas tank. With the average price in California at $4.65 per gallon, the highest in the nation which includes the CA gas tax of 51.1 cents per gallon. Josh recommended to the CA Governor by proposing a state pause increase in the Gasoline State Excise Tax during 2022. This gas tax “holiday” would save California families $523 million this year. This week the Governor listened and proposed suspending the gas tax increase in July and potentially even in 2023 and 2024. Fueling up may still hurt for a while, but at least we can take solace in knowing it could have been way worse??

Josh spent his year working on wildfires. Josh reintroduced the Wildfire Emergency Act, which seeks to reduce fire risk, protect critical infrastructure, and train new fire professionals. Josh put it bluntly saying “when every year is ‘the worst fire year on record,’ we have to do something real to address wildfire safety.” He teamed up with PP leader Jamie Herrera Beutler to send a letter to the U.S. Forest Service Chief, requesting that the department expand incentives to retain and recruit federal firefighters. Josh joined the bipartisan Wildfire Caucus with the hope of helping his California constituents with this ongoing threat. He pushed to lift a pay cap that is impacting more than 500 firefighters and first responders.

Democratic leadership is certainly getting an earful recently as lawmakers jockey to ensure their favored provisions end up in the final version of the Build Back Better Act. For Josh’s part, he’s focused on the price of prescription drug costs, specifically insulin. He joined a letter to Leader Schumer urging the Senate to make access to affordable insulin part of the final piece of legislation. The House version of the bill included a cap on out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 which these lawmakers hope stays in there. Are prescription drug costs one of your biggest issues?

That would be Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who last year courted perhaps the most controversy ever by a postmaster general. Nevertheless, the pattern continues and now Josh is calling him out by way of a letter demanding that DeJoy reverse the USPS service delays and price hikes he recently implemented. Just last month, the DeJoy raised prices on domestic parcels by up to 5 bucks, whilst slowing First Class male from a three day delivery window to a five day window. With Christmas and other holidays right around the corner, this is not exactly terrific news. Gifts aside, this is even worse news for folks who depend on the post office to receive prescription medications. But the real question in all of this is: How the F%#$ does this DeJoy guy still have a job? Let’s get Kevin Costner instead, pretty sure he did a movie about delivering mail.