18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY january 16-22, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com When it comes to reconciliation packages on immigration and [taxes], trade and tariffs—they’re not easy topics. They’re easier said than done.” He also believes Democrats are going to pick their battles. “I don’t think we can be a party of pure resistance,” he says. He has cultivated bipartisanship as his approach to policy: “I’ve laid a pretty solid foundation working with Republicans the last few years.…When I came into office 2017, we were in the same position.” One of things he’s working on with his GOP colleagues is reducing the capital gains tax on home sales. “People don’t want to sell because they get hammered with taxes,” Panetta says. “We want to adjust capital gains so it gives people incentives to sell their homes.” He’d like to provide incentives for workforce housing, and increase the first-time homebuyer tax credit from $10,000 to $15,000. To that end, Panetta’s looking forward in this next term to continuing to serve on the House Ways and Means Committee, which he’s served on for years. “Dealing with taxes, dealing with trade—it’s not easy,” he says. “You’re dealing with some complicated issues that affect people’s lives.” As for what he thinks the House’s next term will look like, he says, regarding the GOP’s slim majority, “You’re going to see a lot of the machinations going on with that. You’re going to have a lot of members that want to get deals. They’re dealing with extremists in the Republican Party— they don’t come here to govern, they come here to blow things up.” U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, doesn’t know what the next two years in the House will look like, but she’s confident about this: “They couldn’t do anything without us—we would have had a [government] shutdown.” She says House Republicans have a “burn it down” faction in their caucus, adding that while Democrats may disagree amongst each other on certain issues, “we get along and don’t hate each other.” As for the threat of mass deportations, and how she plans to protect her constituents, Lofgren says she’s already reached out to advocacy groups and ensured they had materials to let her constituents know their rights. (County Supervisors Chris Lopez and Luis Alejo have likewise been spearheading outreach efforts in the county to do the same.) She adds, however, that because of an immigration bill from 1996, which she voted against, rapid deportation is allowed: “Unfortunately, the legal tools are already in law.” But as is often the case with Trump, he makes promises and doesn’t always follow through on them. “We don’t know what he’s going to do,” Lofgren says. “He said mass deportations, that’s what he says he’s going to do. But to get the kind of numbers he’s talking about, going after serious criminals, there’s not that many.” She adds, “California has always been prepared with serious criminals, when ending their prison terms, for them to be deported… “To get the numbers, you would have to do workplace raids,” she says. She’s reached out to counties in her district—Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz—to make sure they have a plan if, say, kids come from school only to learn their parents are deported. She’s advocating that the counties see that the kids are put into the care of a relative, if possible—she just wants the counties’ Child Protective Services staff to be ready. “He made several [campaign] promises, big-deal promises, tariffs, mass deportation, refusing entry at the southern border, and being mean to trans kids,” Lofgren says. She notes the state of the Republican Party and its narrow lead could help curb some of Trump’s policy proposals: “Given the disarray [in House GOP], there might be radical proposals that can’t get enacted.” As for Trump’s cabinet nominees, she says, “We need to have people who are on Earth 1, not Earth 2.” Lofgren is also concerned about all the billionaires kissing Trump’s ring, as America increasingly resembles an oligarchy. “Part of what we need to do is look out for the kind of family I grew up in—my parents were blue collar workers and lived paycheck to paycheck,” she says. “I grew up in south Palo Alto. On the block I grew up in, nobody went to college.” Lofgren says she’d be happy to work with Trump if the opportunity presents itself to make the country better, “but I’m skeptical about those opportunities.” Lofgren, who served on the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, also says, “Trump has clearly shown authoritarian tendencies. We need to join with others to prevent him from acting unlawfully.” Minutes after speaking with the Weekly, Lofgren makes her way to the House floor to cast her vote for Speaker of the House. During the proceedings, Chair of the House Democratic Caucus Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino, shared some words with the chamber that broadly reflect his party’s values. “I speak on behalf of the governing majority in this Congress, the party that knows how to make a deal and then stick to that deal,” he said. “We will never abandon our values or bedrock principles of freedom and democracy.” House Speaker Mike Johnson held on to his speakership after the first round of voting was extended, before formally moving on to round two—no Democrats voted for Johnson, but he, and reportedly Trump, had conversations with the holdouts. That was able to bring Johnson to the minimum number required votes, 218—which is also the minimum number of votes required to pass legislation. And with cracks already showing in the caucus, it’s unclear, aside from tax cuts, what they’ll unite on. Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, estimates that 30-50 percent of the county’s agricultural workforce are undocumented. So if mass deportations are carried out, the effects on the county’s biggest industry could be devastating, not to mention the impact on lives and families. “That is a concern to growers at this point, as they’re heavily reliant on hand labor obviously,” Groot says. “If the new administration does mass deportations, we would have concerns.” He adds that the county already has a slew of immigration resources on its “I don’t think we can be a party of pure resistance.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks during a town hall meeting on immigration in Salinas on Friday, Jan. 10. “In Trump 1.0 we were very successful as a state in pushing back,” Bonta said. “If and when Trump 2.0 steps outside of the law, we will be there to stop him.” “Trump has clearly shown authoritarian tendencies.” Daniel Dreifuss
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