HOST: Adam Schiff… the Democratic junior US Senator for California… visited San Bernardino Valley College on Monday. He was there to visit the future site of a campus housing project. Schiff also held a roundtable with local college students. Then he joined KVCR’s Madison Aument in the studio where they discussed the California governor’s race, the war in Iran, its effect on oil prices and a bipartisan AI bill.
Madison Aument: Thank you so much, Senator, for your time. I want to start with the California governor's race. When the allegations of sexual assault came out, you withdrew your endorsement of former Representative Eric Swalwell for California governor and asked him to drop out of the race. Do you plan to endorse another candidate?
Sen. Adam Schiff: I haven't decided. I frankly feel so burned by the endorsement I made, I'm reluctant to wade into the governor's race again. I think the only circumstances I would be inclined to do it is if the concern that two Republicans might advance without a Democrat making it to the runoff and giving Californians the choice of a Democratic candidate, if that were to appear even more likely, then I might feel the necessity of getting involved. I really don't like our jungle primary system because it can lead to very counterintuitive results like that one, but at this point, I've not made a decision to get involved.
Madison Aument: Political analysts have kind of waxed and waned on whether the two Republicans can make it through to the November general. I'm curious, if you did end up endorsing someone, is there a particular kind of candidate you're looking for?
Sen. Adam Schiff: Well, yes, I'm really looking for somebody who can get things done. We need to move the state forward. We need to, as I was discussing with the students today, we need to build a lot more housing, really, millions of units of housing in California. So I'm looking for a governor that can break through the red tape, that can make sure that the state works with local government and the federal government to incentivize getting to yes quickly on new housing development, and can work on bringing the cost of that down. And there are a lot of other unmet needs in the state. We have to make it easier to do business in California, to site manufacturing, to move projects forward in a timely way. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So I'm looking very pragmatically for those skills. And the final thing is, sadly, during this presidency, we also need someone who can fight back against the hostile administration, and so I'll be looking for that as well.
Madison Aument: Shifting to oil, according to the California Energy Commission and a report from the LA Times, California is about to lose roughly 200,000 barrels a day of imported crude that won't arrive from the Persian Gulf. Gas is already, for Californians, $6 a gallon. How can you help California through this?
Sen. Adam Schiff: Well, the first thing we can do to bring down gas prices is to end this ill-considered war with Iran. So as recently as a few days ago, I offered another war powers resolution, forced a vote on it in the Senate. We did get bipartisan support from two Republican senators. We needed at least four. So we're going to keep up the effort to end the war. That's probably the most dramatic thing we can do to bring down gas prices. They've gone up 50% since the beginning of this war. More broadly, though, we have to invest in alternatives to oil to force oil to compete with renewable sources of energy. There, we have to again push back on the administration because they're trying to kill wind and solar and force both California but also the rest of the country to rely on oil and gas. We see that, for example, recently in Morro Bay, where there's a wind project the administration has fought, and they recently agreed to spend taxpayer dollars to force that company to basically buy off that wind company, to get them to stop that project and invest that wind project's money into oil and gas instead. That's insane. With all of these data centers coming online, we have more demand for energy than ever. Ninety to ninety-five percent of the new energy coming on the grid is from renewable sources. So to attack wind and solar just makes no sense whatsoever, but it will have the effect, if we reduce these alternatives, of just jacking up the price of oil even higher.
Madison Aument: In terms of the Iran war, like you said, you pushed to reassert Congress's authority over military action. The latest effort to force the vote didn't get through. What's your plan now to enforce those limits on presidential power?
Sen. Adam Schiff: We're going to keep offering war powers resolutions. Mine, I think, was the sixth I introduced, the very first to try to stop the bombing of the ships in the Caribbean. That too had bipartisan support, but not enough to get passed. But every time we bring these up, we gather more and more Republican support. As long as the war continues, Republicans are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the war, and we'll get to a point where these start to pass and we put real pressure on the president. We're also in the appropriation process, going to try to stop funding for the war. They've already spent 25 billion. That's what the Pentagon says. It's probably, in reality, a lot higher than that. At one point, they wanted to ask for 200 billion. The president wants 1.5 trillion for the defense budget, which would be a massive increase. Fighting the funding for the war, I hope we can also bring an end to this.
Madison Aument: In the session with the students, you were talking about AI a bit, and you said, you know, this could be this wonderful and terrible thing. We're kind of in this middle space right now. You and South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds, who's a Republican, are pursuing a bipartisan AI bill to allocate resources for students to learn about AI. I'm curious why.
Sen. Adam Schiff: Well, I think it's going to be vitally important that, as young people graduate, they have a working knowledge of AI. They know how to benefit from it and use it. I think that's going to be an essential skill in the workplace. We're already seeing AI affect college graduates who had been majoring in software engineering that can now largely be done by AI. And so we have to, I think, pivot to those areas where the job market is still going to be strong. It's an incredibly valuable tool. And in areas, for example, in health care, I think we're going to see dramatic increases in cures, and we're going to accelerate the ability to do clinical trials and narrow the list of candidates down to those that are likely to be more successful. So on the positive side, there are some real positives. On the negative side, though, it's going to be hugely disruptive to the workforce. So what I'm working on with Senator Rounds and others is efforts to help educate our workforce, our students on AI and prepare for it, as well as to educate our educators on how to teach using AI.
Madison Aument: Well, that's all my questions, Senator. Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else you want to add?
Sen. Adam Schiff: My pleasure. Just wonderful to be here and talk to college students. I've said it's my goal to visit all the community colleges throughout California, and so far, I've really been enjoying it. It's wonderful to be back on campus.