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Sen.-elect Adam Schiff doesn't want to talk about Trump. He wants to talk about the economy

Sen.-elect Adam B. Schiff doesn't really want to talk about President-elect Donald Trump. He wants to talk about the economy.

"The issue of the last election — which we didn't satisfactorily answer, which we're going to need to answer as a country — is if you're working hard in America, can you still earn a good living?" Schiff said in a recent interview. "For too many people, that's not the case."

Yes, California's incoming senator is "sadly confident" that Trump is "going to abuse his office" during his second term, and promised to call out such abuses if they occur. He believes several of Trump's Cabinet picks are unqualified, and that their nominations must be rejected.

But as he heads to the Senate after nearly a quarter-century in the House, Schiff said he is more interested in tackling the economic woes that many analysts believe undergirded Trump's victory — especially sky-high housing costs and entrenched homelessness, which Schiff said were "overriding concerns" for many of the Californians he met on the campaign trail.

He also has his sights on faltering rural healthcare systems, along with unaffordable child care and water access issues facing farmers, he said.

"We can't wait for four years to deal with housing. We can't wait four years to deal with challenges to child care, or the fact that the economy is not working for lots of people," Schiff said. "We need to solve these problems."

Schiff's emphasis on economic issues is not new. While much of his campaign and prolific fundraising efforts related back to his disdain for — and opponent Steve Garvey's support for — Trump, Schiff often hit on economic problems as well. He laid out policies on housing and other issues and promised to work for the many Californians struggling to make ends meet.

But now, in the wake of a bruising election in which Trump and the Republicans swept control of the White House, Senate and House, Schiff is leaning harder into that economic message — which has earned both derision and respect.

Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the California Republican Party, said she would "love to take him at his word that these are the issues that he is now going to be tackling after almost 25 years in the House," but "history tells a different story." In recent weeks, she noted, Schiff has issued statements condemning several of Trump's Cabinet picks, as well as decisions to close out criminal cases against him.

"He's still obsessed with Trump," Patterson said. "He isn't someone that has found solutions for Californians. He isn't someone who is focused on the problems that Californians are facing. He is a person that has been solely focused on the president for the last eight years."

Kevin Spillane, a veteran GOP strategist in the state, said Schiff's refocus on economic issues seemed genuine — and a smart political move, given the outcome of the election.

"His change in tone is simply acknowledging political reality," Spillane said. "He's a smart and pragmatic politician."

Rather than harping on Trump's every misstep, Spillane said, Schiff may well choose to focus on getting things done, including by taking a page from his less-partisan past.

"Schiff before his role, his image, as a resistance fighter against Trump was really known as a more pragmatic liberal both in the [California] Legislature and Congress," Spillane said, "and that's probably more true to his personality."

Schiff is also starting a new job — which always requires a recalibration. He knows many Californians want him to keep fighting Trump, but he also believes many voters want him to fix things for them.

"When people see the quality of their life start to slip below that of their parents, they're receptive to any demagogue who comes along promising they alone can fix it," he said. "And so we need to figure this out — how to make the economy work for people."

A huge part of that, Schiff said, is housing.

Too many Americans are barely scraping by to afford rent, and far too few can afford to buy a home, he said. Many more are frustrated with the related struggle of "epidemic homelessness" in their communities, he said.

In his view, "both of those problems come back to the lack of supply," Schiff said. To that end, he plans to look for ways to "remove obstacles" to new housing, in part by pushing for a bipartisan expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which he said is "small and oversubscribed and generally unavailable for most people who want to use it."

The program provides about $10 billion in annual tax credits to state and local agencies constructing or rehabbing low-income rental housing, according to the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.

Schiff also plans to look for new ways the federal government can encourage local municipalities to approve affordable housing projects more quickly, and then "bring urgency" to getting it built.

Shane Phillips, housing initiative project manager at UCLA's Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, said housing affordability and homelessness issues won't be solved if "we don't start building a lot more homes."

Phillips said expanding the tax credit — as well as housing vouchers "and other supply- and demand-side subsidies" — would help, but they will serve fewer people and cost more "if we don't address the housing scarcity problem."

He suggested several other measures that could both help and find bipartisan support in Congress — including changes to the tax code and to loan products that would incentivize production of more affordable or mixed-income multifamily projects, and revisions to mortgage lending standards that allow "more people with good — not great — credit scores" to qualify.

Another issue Schiff said he wants to try to address is rural healthcare, which he said is "in total freefall."

Schiff raised concerns about such care before the election, including during a campaign stop last month at Madera Community Hospital, which declared bankruptcy and closed its doors early last year but is now set to reopen with the support of emergency funds from the state.

Schiff said rural hospitals all across the state and country are "basically hanging on by a thread," in part because government reimbursements for low-income and elderly patient care are "way too low" and attracting and keeping staff has become too difficult.

He said his hope is that finding solutions will be a bipartisan priority, "since the red rural states are in very much the same position as the Central Valley or Imperial Valley."

Steve Stark, Madera Community Hospital's chief executive officer, said he was "very encouraged" by Schiff's visit and interest in tackling such problems in Washington.

Stark said about 70% of his hospital's patient base relies on Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program for lower-income people, and another 22% rely on Medicare, the federal program for older people and those with disabilities. That greatly restricts the hospital's ability to pull in revenue from the remaining 8% of its patients, he said.

On top of that, population growth in the region caused the hospital to lose a federal rural health designation for serving a community of fewer than 50,000 people, and with it a host of add-on reimbursements that had greatly helped its bottom line. Without those add-ons, attracting and keeping staff and providing certain types of care — such as obstetrics — became far more difficult, Stark said.

Stark said a great start to fixing the problems facing rural hospitals would be increasing the population limit for towns to remain eligible for rural health reimbursements — especially in large-population states such as California, where even rural towns are "still pretty big."

Another major help would be making more types of care, including obstetrics, cost-based services under Medi-Cal and Medicare, meaning their full cost would be covered by the programs, Stark said. Otherwise, hospitals like Madera are losing about $7,000 per delivery, he said.

Without such help, Stark said, hospitals like his will continue balancing on a "very fine rope."

A third priority Schiff identified was child care, which has become so expensive and hard to come by in California that many people — especially women and women of color — are "kept out of the workforce because they would have to pay more in child care than they can make in the workplace," he said.

That is just "bad economics," he said.

Schiff said he hopes his leverage as a legislator from the most populous state will help him make progress on all of the above issues — and on other tough ones such as immigration. "When you're representing over 40 million people, it brings a certain heft to your representation," he said.

He said he also hopes he can leverage new relationships with Republican colleagues, with whom he is sure there is common ground. He said he has done just that in the past — pointing, as an example, to his work in the House with former Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas).

Schiff and Culberson, who were in the same freshman class, both had a strong interest in NASA — Culberson being from Houston, Schiff having the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in his district. After they and their families met during a bipartisan retreat early on in their terms, they ended up working collaboratively on space initiatives for years, despite disagreeing on many other issues.

Culberson, in an interview, agreed their work together after finding a "common passion" was an example of the sort of bipartisanship that is possible in Congress — and that Schiff is capable of continuing.

"We worked together closely — along with other Democrats and Republicans — to preserve American leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery," he said. "Adam's always been a strong advocate of both and able to work with members of both sides of the aisle — and all over the country."

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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