Congratulations on your victory. Now the real work begins.
In the coming weeks, you'll draw your office lottery number, attend orientation, and field more invitations than you can count. Everyone will have advice on which caucuses to join, which fights to pick, and which issues should define you.
We have our own advice: before Washington tells you what kind of member of Congress to be, remember why voters sent you here.
Between us, we spent 30 years in the House, both in leadership. One of us flipped a Republican seat in a district that Donald Trump carried. The other represented a Democratic stronghold for two decades. We came from very different districts, but we both know voters are quick to judge whether you're working on their problems or Washington's.
Voters were not subtle this year. When asked what Washington should focus on, the economy won by a wide margin, with the cost of living the most common answer. Life costs too much, thanks to gas prices, tariffs, and chaos in Washington. Electricity rates have risen 33 percent in five years. The country is short 5 million homes. Scammers stole a record $15.9 billion from Americans last year. Families feel those pressures every month in their utility bills, rent, mortgage payments, grocery budgets, and bank accounts.
That is your assignment: tackle those national problems first.
And it's bigger than simply bringing a few prices down. Lasting affordability also requires an economy where paychecks can keep up, businesses want to invest and hire here, and families have a real chance to get ahead. You should ask a basic question of every major policy choice: Will this make it easier or harder to build, hire, invest, and afford life in America?
That question can also help you navigate one of the first temptations you'll face as a new member.
Washington is full of movements, factions, and interest groups eager to sign you up. They bring energy, attention, donors, and a ready-made political identity. We understand the appeal. But many of you just won highly competitive districts, including places where voters backed the other party at the top of the ticket. Those voters did not send you to Washington to adopt somebody else's ideological checklist. They sent you to solve problems. So start with the problems they can see and feel.
Get more energy onto the grid
Winter is here, energy costs are rising, and Americans want results. Thousands of energy projects—from transmission lines to power plants to battery storage—are stuck waiting years to connect to the grid. These delays have real consequences: projects cost more, investment and jobs go elsewhere, and consumers don't get the relief they need. The Senate's bipartisan permitting bill would be a boon for local economies and energy projects. If the current Congress doesn't finish the job, the next one should.
Borrow from a bipartisan playbook
You probably spent part of your campaign promising voters you would work with anyone who had a good idea. Now you have to prove it. The Build America Caucus released a bipartisan agenda with more than 60 proposals aimed at making it easier and cheaper to build housing, energy, infrastructure, and childcare capacity. You won't agree with all of them. You shouldn't have to. The point is the approach: start with the bottlenecks making everyday necessities scarce and expensive, then find people in both parties willing to remove them. Bipartisanship is not the goal. Solving the problem is. But on many of the biggest affordability challenges, you will need both parties to do it.
Turn the housing bill into actual homes
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act showed Congress can still pass big, bipartisan bills. But families cannot live in a legislative accomplishment. They need homes they can afford. Your job is to make sure the bill is funded and implemented quickly, and then to take on the barriers that make homes too slow and expensive to build. Judge success by what happens in your own backyard: Are more homes getting built? Are they being built faster? Can more families afford them?
Treat scams and fraud like the pocketbook issue they are
Scams rarely get talked about alongside housing and energy, but they should. Americans lost $15.9 billion to scammers last year, and with technology rapidly evolving, we can expect that number will only grow. For a family that gets cleaned out by a scammer, that is not an abstract law-enforcement statistic. It is rent, groceries, retirement savings, or a down payment that is suddenly gone. From the SCAM Act to the GUARD Act, Congress has already shown there is bipartisan appetite to strengthen fraud prevention. Build on it. Protecting people from having their money stolen is about as straightforward an affordability agenda as Congress can have.
Start now
Your constituents may not follow every committee markup or floor debate, but they will pay attention to your first votes, your first bills, and the issues you choose to talk about.
Two years from now, the important question will be whether the people who sent you to Congress feel like they can breathe a little easier. Did their electric bill stop climbing? Are there good jobs in their community? Can their kids imagine buying a home? Is starting or growing a small business a little easier?
Those are harder achievements to fit into a viral clip. They are also much closer to what voters hired you to do.
So welcome to Congress. Learn where the good coffee is. Join some caucuses, make some friends—the kind who will work across the aisle to get things done.
Welcome to Washington. Now get to work.
