She voted no to reopen the government during its longest shutdown in US history, urging lawmakers to find a bipartisan solution to prevent health coverage costs from rising.

It's one of several cost-of-living issues top of mind for her constituents, and she joins us now to explain what she's doing about them.

Congresswoman Susie Lee, a Democrat representing Nevada's Third Congressional District, welcome back to Nevada Week.

-Thanks, Amber.

Great to be here.

-I'd like to start with housing.

There's a report from the Lied Center for Real Estate at UNLV.

It says that the Las Vegas housing market is largely unaffordable for much of the local population.

And among some of the recent action that you've taken to address this, you have called for more transparency into big corporate landlords.

You have also helped to reintroduce the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act.

Of those two, which is priority for you?

(Congresswoman Susie Lee) Well, absolutely.

Listen, obviously the Lands Bill is such an important piece of legislation.

We have a housing crisis.

It's a supply and demand issue.

We just simply don't have enough supply of affordable housing in our state.

I just actually this morning had a round table with experts from banking, home building, from the nonprofit world, from city and local and state agencies as well talking about this very issue.

Basically, you know, we have got to get federal funding into our state, but we also have to cut some red tape and make sure that we're having processes where people can build affordable housing faster.

We've done plenty to bring funding to Southern Nevada.

I passed a bipartisan piece of legislation, the AACE Act, the Accelerating Appraisals Act, which has alleviated one piece of red tape-- -And that Republican Governor Joe Lombardo also supported.

-Joe Lombardo supported it as well.

And we just need to continue to have our eye on the prize; work together from a federal, state, and local agency framework; and continue to get housing built quickly and bring online.

So, yes.

-It's a complex issue, housing.

But one issue within Nevada specifically is that there is a lot of land owned by the federal government, and so this Act specifically would release 25,000 acres of public land in Southern Nevada.

This comes from Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.

She has tried to get through this legislation for many years.

This is the first year that you are now introducing or have introduced companion legislation.

Why now?

-Listen, I serve on the Natural Resources Committee, the committee with the jurisdiction over land issues.

This piece of legislation has been so instrumental for Southern Nevada, releasing about $368 million that's been used for water infrastructure, parks, other recreation facilities.

This is a prime piece of legislation that really serves as a model for the West.

In fact, the Secretary of the Interior, Burgum, was in front of my committee and highlighted this as a great piece of land use legislation.

That being said, at least in the House of Representatives, the Chairman of the Resource Committee doesn't seem to be willing to move forward any piece of legislation that has conservation in it, which is such a strong piece of part of the Lands Bill.

So we're going to continue--Mark Amodei has a Northern Nevada Lands Bill as well--continue to work with our colleagues to try to get this piece of legislation into something that can be accepted in a bipartisan manner.

Good signal?

We sort of get-- we're getting conflicting signals, obviously, from the Secretary seeming to endorse and support this legislation, but when it comes to getting it past the House, the Chairman of the Committee doesn't seem to be as in favor of that.

-Okay.

So in April, fellow Democrat and fellow Nevada Representative Dina Titus told the Nevada Current that she opposed the bill as written because she says it would make land available to developers to build more homes that average Nevadans cannot afford.

She says there are no guarantees in this legislation that what will be built on this land is affordable housing.

It could be, you know, mansions.

How do you respond to that?

-Well, I've been in contact with home builders, with agencies all across Southern Nevada.

And the number one issue with availability of housing is availability of land.

And you can't-- When you're spending years trying to get approvals for your project, that has cost to it, too.

So this is basically making this land available.

It is for-- There will be affordable housing in this bill.

And, again, many of the people in this sphere are really focused on making sure we have the land available, that we can actually build housing in a reasonable time frame so that-- because every time you have a delay, that has additional costs.

And that's what this bill will do.

-Are you saying language will be added to guarantee affordable housing is built?

-There is-- Availability of land is a key factor in rising prices for houses.

It's a supply and demand.

The less we don't build-- The less housing we build, the higher the prices go.

-About the corporate landlords, will you expand on what you're doing with that, and part of that is that you want the government to reveal who is, who these investors are that are buying 23% of all homes purchased in Las Vegas last year, that's according to the Lied Center for Real Estate.

If you get that information, what do you do with it?

-We want to make sure that homes in Nevada are purchased by residents of Nevada; that they're not purchased by equity investors who are coming in from out of state doing the, you know, buying these up as an investment and then jacking up the rent for individuals.

So part of the bill is, one, to understand the level of the problem, but, two, also create a fund where you find these entities that do that and then you can use that funding to then provide support for individuals.

-So charging those investors a fee or...?

-Well, if they-- If they are increasing rents egregiously, and but the first part of the bill is making sure that we're understanding who's actually doing this and what they're doing.

-Okay.

No tax on tips.

There is a version of it in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

I know that you call it with language that we should not use on public television, especially.

But that version of it that did pass, it got a little bit more clarification in recent weeks on how it's going to work.

The IRS says it will temporarily delay the enforcement of a provision that would have kept certain service workers from claiming the full $25,000 income deduction.

Is that enough for you?

-Listen, I am proud, you know, proud that we supported the Tips Act, which was passed unanimously in the Senate.

Unfortunately, Mike Johnson did not bring it up in the House.

-And this was back-- -I am glad that the President has taken our lead and that Republicans did include a provision of the no tax-- you know, provide no tax on tips in this bill.

But it's a start, in my opinion, and we can do so much more.

And that adjustment that you just mentioned is one example what can be done.

Also we, you know, these-- these tax breaks should be permanent.

-As it is, it's only-- -My one complaint about this is the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that was included in this bill, those are permanent.

But these, these tax breaks for our service employees, first of all, their income is, is capped.

So if you earn over $150,000 as a couple, you have a cap on that; whereas, if you earn, you know, the wealthiest Americans aren't seeing their tax breaks capped.

These sunset in 2028.

So we can make this better: making them permanent; making sure that we have guardrails so that people aren't reporting some type of investment income or, you know, just gaming the system, that it's really applying to true tipped workers; and then removing the caps and making sure that they have availability that this tax break applies to everyone.

So I think we-- This is a first start, first stage, and I think we can do better for our tip employees here in Nevada.

And that's what we included in the Tips Act, which had passed the Senate prior to this.

Mike Johnson failed to bring it up for a vote in the House and instead included these provisions.

So we can-- I think we can improve it, and that's exactly what we want to do.

-The cap you're talking about, $25,000 income deduction, phases out at $150,000 for individuals and $300,000 for married couples.

And, yes, it's important to make that clear because-- Well, there was this political article about Democrats taking-- believing that they are responsible for the initial discussion around no tax on tips and who gets to take credit for it.

Republicans believe they should.

It ended up with-- -It's a good bipartisan piece of, you know-- It's a good bipartisan issue.

I just said, let's make it better for our tipped employees.

-Okay.

The Affordable Care Act, the enhanced tax credits that are set to expire at the end of this year, there are 3 million people who live in Nevada, and of them, there are about 95,000 who currently use those expiring tax credits.

It's a small percentage, but it is the reason that you continue to vote no on reopening the federal government.

Was it worth it?

-Listen, this is an issue that's incredibly personal to me.

Before the Affordable Care Act, my father lost his job when he was 58, never was able to get a type of employment that had benefits.

My parents fell into the trap where because of pre-existing conditions, they could not afford health insurance, so they chose to go without it.

And like so many people who rely on these tax credits, without them, they are about to see their premiums go up three-fold, four-fold.

I have one woman who is a single mother has her premiums set to go up from $85 a month to $700 a month.

That's unaffordable.

And so what many of these people will do is make the decision to go without it and go without insurance.

And what that does is make insurance expensive for all of us, because, one, first of all, your risk pool changes.

The people who are healthiest, younger people, tend to just take the risk.

And so that changes the whole pricing model of insurance.

But you also have people who now will not take-- you know, have preventative care, will end up getting their care in emergency rooms, which is the most expensive type of health care you can get.

And we will all foot the bill for that.

And so, you know, this bill, in extending the ACA, while you say it's for a small proportion of Americans, it actually will impact the cost of insurance, which is already set to go up 20% in some cases here in Nevada.

That it will make insurances more expensive for all of us.

-Across the board.

You are echoing the same sentiment as Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

She said the same thing about these expiring ACA credits, that it would impact her family as well as several of her constituents.

Granted, about the Affordable Care Act as a whole, she also said that made health insurance unaffordable for her family.

So she's on both sides of this issue.

She has recently announced she's resigning from Congress.

Once a fierce ally of President Donald Trump, they've had, you know, a public back-and-forth, and now she's leaving.

What do you make of that, if anything?

-Listen, I don't know what makes Marjorie Taylor Greene tick, but she's made it clear that this is an issue.

We need to work together in a bipartisan manner.

Do you know that the Senate agreed to take a vote on a Democrat proposal for extending the ACA tax subsidies before the end of December?

That was part of the deal to reopen the government, but and then we have till the end of January.

And so we were discussing what it is we need to do.

Is it a two-year extension?

Is it putting some income limits on it?

Republicans seem to want some form of income caps on who qualifies for these.

They even have even suggested some, you know, buy-in that people have to put a little skin in the game and make a minimum payment.

So all these things are on the table.

I think that, you know, my frustration with the process with the shutdown was that Mike Johnson shut down the House of Representatives for 43 days.

Actually, it was almost two months, and that was related to other issues as well.

But not once did he open up a discussion in a bipartisan manner to deal with the ACA tax credits.

But now we're out of it.

We got to move forward.

I'm happy to see that the White House is indicating a willingness to negotiate.

Now we're starting to see how House Republicans negotiate and Senators, and so let's get to a plan where we can continue to support-- And again, there's a lot that needs to be reformed in our health care space.

There's PBM legislation on pharmaceutical pricing that maybe that's part of the bill.

Republicans are talking about instead of doing tax credits, providing savings accounts to individuals.

I'm not really sure I'm as big of a fan as that, because I think if you're really worried about reducing fraud, I think it may open up the door for additional avenues.

But let's have those conversations, which Mike Johnson did not do for almost two months on this issue.

And I find that a dereliction of his duty to the people of this country.

-Congresswoman Susie Lee, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thanks, Amber.