Hello, this is Ezra Klein. I am out for a bit longer on paternity leave, but today I am happy to share with you a great conversation

I had earlier this year with Jerusalem Demsys, who is now a co-host of the weeds over at Vox and a star reporter covering

housing infrastructure and other topics. So, really good one, so I hope you enjoy and I'll be back in January.

I am a California. I was born and raised in Southern California. I was educated in the States of Public Schools and I graduated from the University of California system.

I moved back a couple years ago after a long time on the East Coast because I love California. I'm a California partisan kind of wherever I am.

But I'm also worried about the state I love. The median price for home in the Golden State is more than $700,000. It is home to four of the nation's five most expensive housing markets,

a quarter of the nation's homeless residents. And as a result, California has the highest poverty rate in the nation when you factor in housing costs.

That is not because of the current set of politicians. The reason is deeper. It is very, very, very hard to build things in California, particularly homes.

But it's also just hard to build anything. After years of delays and cost overruns, California is long anticipated high-speed rail system,

the one that was partially funded by 2009 stimulus dollars. The one that was supposed to go between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

It's been shrunk to align connecting the mid-sized cities of Bakersfield and Merced. And it is still tens of billions over budget and years behind schedule.

I care about what's happening in California a lot because I'm from here, but it's not just a problem here. This is a New York problem. Look at the difficulty both with housing affordability,

but also my God, how long it has taken to upgrade Penn Station over there. It is a Seattle problem. It is a Washington DC problem. And it's an American problem.

And now President Biden is building much of his agenda, much of his theory of the policy case around building infrastructure.

But it costs more to build things in America than in Peer Nations. It happens more slowly and a lot of projects simply die in red tape and lawsuits.

On so many policy issues in Democratic Party's pitches, it is simple.

Elect Democrats and they will use government to do big things, to build big things, to solve big problems. The weakness in that pitch is it in the places where Democrats hold most power,

buildings often really, really hard. And so accomplishing the Democrats policy calls is really hard. And I think this is a problem within Democratic governance that liberals need to confront more squarely and try to be more curious about its causes.

Jerusalem Demsys is a policy reporter at Fox who covers a range of issues from housing and homelessness to infrastructure and transportation.

She's been doing great reporting on these topics with exactly this frame in mind.

So on one level of the conversation we have here is a policy conversation about why cost so much to build in America and then in particular states and why it's so hard.

But on another level, it is about something more central to the Democratic-driven liberal project. Why does a party that wants a government to do big things have so much trouble building things when they're in charge?

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