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paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal,

this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast. Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast.

Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel, a Wall Street Journal opinion page podcast. And I am so excited to say that this week we are joined by Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer, who's been starting his fifth term in Congress representing Northern New Jersey.

He is a senior member of the Problem Solvers Caucus. Welcome, Congressman, and thank you so much

for being here. Thanks, Kim. Thanks for having me.

I want to spend most of this podcast looking ahead, but just one quickie on the recent past

and in light of the inauguration on Monday.

It was obviously a disappointing election for Democrats who lost the White House and the Senate

and didn't manage to retake the House.

Rub it in, Kim.

Now I just just making it clear for listeners out there.

But as you watched inauguration, what do you think the message of this election

was to your party? And how does it respond going forward? I think the number one focus that we've

got to make sure we're clear with voters about and which isn't something that I've been focused on

for years is overall affordability. Right. And making sure people know, and this is what I'm

focused on in Jersey all the time, that we've got to do everything we can to lower their taxes,

lower their costs, and make life more affordable for them, and that that's where our laser focus is,

whether, you know, and listen, people are dealing with higher costs. We know that, right? Whether

they're talking about

child care costs or health care costs or food or rent and mortgages right things are expensive so i

...