At President Trump’s State of the Union, a Pennsylvania mom stood up and told the country that her family is saving $5,000 a year — real money, kitchen-table money — because of no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and an expanded child tax credit. It wasn’t a talking point. It was a receipt. One side is governing. The other is still working on the talking points.
Democrats have discovered affordability. They’re talking about it in town halls and building entire legislative agendas around it. Don’t be fooled, though. For the American left, affordability isn’t a mission; it’s a marketing strategy. A ploy. Another label pasted over the same Big Government programs they’ve always championed. The prices may be dressed up in new language, but working families are still the ones paying them.
Exclusive polling conducted for the Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity makes the stakes plain. Affordability and cost of living rank as the number one concern for Americans, cited by 25 percent of respondents. About 78 percent of Americans say prices are still rising – 35 percent rapidly, 43 percent more slowly. Only 13 percent believe they’ve stabilized. Democrats built that economy. They should own it.
The record is not debatable. Four years of Democrat economic management produced the highest Consumer Price Index reading in 40 years, 9.1 percent. Real wages went negative. Monthly mortgage payments on median-priced homes rose over $1,200, a direct consequence of reckless stimulus spending that forced the Federal Reserve to raise rates at the fastest pace in modern history. And while families were rationing baby formula during a shortage the FDA allowed to fester for months, the Biden White House was telling Americans the economy had never been stronger. They repeatedly denied record inflation even as it was burning a hole in every American’s wallet. That is the Democratic economic record. Now they want to run it back.
The waste adds insult to injury. In predominantly blue states like Minnesota and California, pandemic-era programs became vehicles for industrial-scale fraud. Billions meant for working families were siphoned off by fraudsters: fake daycares, fancy cars, and opulent homes. The architects didn’t resign. They went back to Washington and demanded more funding to fix the problems they created. More money in, less accountability out. That’s the cycle. That’s their model. That’s Big Government.
The pattern holds at the state level. Zohran Mamdani ran for New York City mayor on an affordability platform and is already floating plans to raid the public employee pension reserve fund and raise property taxes 9.5 percent on middle-class New Yorkers. His signature affordability initiative is paying citizens up to $45 per hour to shovel snow. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger was elected governor on similar promises. Less than two months in, her green energy cap and trade mandates are driving up utility costs and Boeing announced it is moving its defense headquarters from Arlington to St. Louis. The promises don’t survive contact with the ideology. They never do.
Republicans, meanwhile, are producing results. The Working Families Tax Cuts Act, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and an expanded child tax credit, is putting money back in working Americans’ pockets. Americans are seeing record IRS refunds averaging $3,800. That Pennsylvania mom at the State of the Union was not a prop. She was evidence.
That’s why we’re launching the Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity. Make the Working Families Tax Cut provisions permanent so families can plan around them. Expand Trump Accounts to give every American child a foundation of economic security from birth. Crack down on the health insurance and Medicaid fraud quietly bleeding the system dry, while premiums keep climbing. On energy, the President’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge requires the tech giants building massive data centers to pay their fair share of grid costs rather than offloading them onto working families’ utility bills. And on housing, the regulatory stranglehold locking a generation out of homeownership has to be broken. These are innovative solutions and Democrats will claim to support every item on that list. Watch what they actually do.
Free enterprise does not need to be defended theoretically. It bankrupted the Soviet Union and built the most innovative economy in human history. What Democrats are offering in its place, government price controls dressed up as consumer protection, bureaucrats deciding what the market is allowed to do, has a track record, too. It has never worked anywhere it has been tried. Ever. Americans are living with a version of it right now, and they know it. There is one road out of this affordability crisis. It runs through Main Street. Not through Big Government central planners lurking behind an affordability slogan.
Chuck Flint is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity and a former U.S. Senate Chief of Staff.
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