California’s high-speed rail project was sold to voters in 2008 as a $33 billion system scheduled for completion in 2020, but is now five years past due with only 170 miles under construction in the Central Valley and an estimated price tag that has ballooned to $128 billion — with some state documents putting the ultimate figure as high as $231 billion, nearly seven times what voters were promised.
Under the Newsom administration, California spent more than $24 billion on homelessness over five years, yet the population of unhoused Californians grew to more than 181,000 — and a state audit found that three of the five major programs reviewed, which together received $9.4 billion since 2020, could not even be evaluated for effectiveness due to a lack of data.
California voters approved a 2014 ballot measure authorizing $2.7 billion for water storage projects, yet more than a decade later not one has been completed — a negligence made visible by fire: the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire destroyed 911 homes in the Santa Cruz Mountains , with less than a third rebuilt five years later , and when the Palisades Fire struck in January 2025, it killed at least 29 people and destroyed thousands more homes at a cost likely reaching hundreds of billions of dollars — a state that collected the money, made the promises, and left its communities without the water infrastructure they were owed.
With Sacramento’s one-party leadership having presided over a $128 billion train to nowhere, $24 billion in unaccountable homelessness spending, and a decade of broken promises on water storage, CD-19 voters advancing to the general election have a clear choice in Peter Verbica — a CFP®, JD, and SCU and MIT graduate who believes Californians deserve better.
Paid for by Verbica for Congress.