With midterms days away, every poll says prices are the story. Here is what the numbers show right now, and how each party’s plans hold up against them.
Walk through any grocery store aisle, open a utility bill, or look at a real estate listing today, and you will find the defining political reality of our time: the American voter is trapped in an affordability squeeze.
Voters, candidates, and pollsters rarely agree on anything, but this year they agree on the issue. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that half of registered voters name the cost of living as the most important factor in how they will vote. Economist/YouGov tracking shows 37 percent calling inflation their top issue, the highest share since that tracking began in 2022. A KFF poll also found health care costs tied with gas prices as the top economic worry.
Even the word itself has become political. President Trump has publicly dismissed “affordability” as a hoax cooked up by rivals. Yet a Harris poll for The Guardian found that 96 percent of Republicans say the country is in an affordability crisis. So, the argument is no longer about whether there is a problem. It is about whose answers fit it.
What the data says right now
- Inflation re-accelerated. Consumer prices rose 3.7 percent over the 12 months ending in September, up from 3.4 percent in August. Gasoline did more than half the work in the monthly increase and is up about 34 percent from a year ago. In the New York–Newark–Jersey City area, gasoline is up nearly 37 percent over the year. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, is a calmer 2.6 percent.
- Groceries are the quiet spot. Food prices are up 2.5 percent over the year, and grocery prices fell 0.1 percent in September. Restaurant prices are what pushed the overall food index up.
- Paychecks are losing ground. Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings are down about 0.7 percent over the past year.
- Housing is stuck at a record. The median existing-home price hit $440,660 in June, a record and the 36th straight month of year-over-year gains. Mortgage rates dipped below 6 percent earlier this year, then climbed back to roughly 6.6 to 6.75 percent after the Iran conflict began. Shelter inflation is running around 3 percent.
- Health insurance got pricier. Marketplace enrollment has since fallen in every state except New Mexico, the first drop in seven years, and insurers are proposing median 2027 premium increases of roughly 14 to 15 percent. The enhanced ACA tax credits expired at the end of 2025. KFF estimates a 40-year-old in Indiana earning $65,000 would pay about $546 a month for a benchmark plan in 2027, versus $316 in 2025.
- Impact of Tariffs. Supreme Court struck down the emergency-powers tariffs in February, paving the way for gigantic refunds. The Trump administration replaced them with a temporary global tariff under a different law. Yale’s Budget Lab estimated that the tariffs would cost an average American family $1,700 per household.
One scope note: the gasoline spike is tied to the war with Iran. I am not grading war policy. I am grading what each party offers to ease the cost of living.
Inflation on prices of goods and services
The Reality of the Ledger: What the Data Shows
To accurately measure this baseline, the data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) point to the intersecting economic pressures weighing on households:
- Energy and Utility Costs: The war with Iran, which has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, has disrupted affordability. Data from multiple sources show residential electricity and natural gas bills have risen, driven by rising infrastructure demand, expanding data center consumption, and regional grid pressures. Average retail electricity prices have climbed over 5% year over year, creating cumulative heating and power cost anxieties heading into winter.
- Sticky Inflation and Core Pressures: BLS data shows inflation ticking up to 3.7% over the last 12-month period, fueled significantly by a surge in retail gasoline and transportation energy shocks, keeping overall price growth stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s targets.
- The Middle-Class Wage-and-Cost Squeeze: Even as the hyperinflation has cooled from its absolute peak, inflation-adjusted (real) hourly earnings have faced downward pressure, meaning essential daily costs—housing, utility services, and insurance—continue to outpace nominal wage gains for many working families.
How do the political parties propose to fix this? Let’s grade their answers.
The Right: Supply-Side Populism, Deregulation, and Tariffs
The Republican approach to affordability leans heavily on traditional conservative principles married to a new wave of economic nationalism: unleashing domestic energy production, slashing regulations, cutting taxes, and using aggressive trade barriers (tariffs) to protect domestic manufacturing.
Proposed Policy:
- Energy Dominance: Republicans have framed the sweeping deregulation behind the slogan “drill, baby, drill” as the silver bullet to reducing electricity and fuel prices by half.
- Protectionism: Broad tariffs are pitched to shield American workers from foreign competition, revitalize domestic manufacturing, and shift the tax burden away from citizens.
Graded Against the Data: C+
- The Good: Lowering corporate tax burdens and cutting red tape can stimulate short-term business investment. Furthermore, prioritizing domestic energy output is a logical lever for long-term supply expansion.
- The Flaw: Economists universally understand that tariffs are taxes importers pay and routinely pass on to everyday consumers as higher prices. Even Republicans generally oppose tariffs until Trump came along. I do not believe Trump’s finance advisers could make a boldface claim that tariffs bring unprecedented wealth to America. The calculus on tariffs and immediate consumer relief does not add up. Promising lower prices while simultaneously enacting broad import taxes creates a direct policy contradiction.
Furthermore, while the GOP touts domestic energy deregulation as an instant fix, global commodity prices, extreme weather, and the massive grid infrastructure needs (like powering new data centers) have kept utility bills trending upward despite political promises.
The Left: Government-Led Intervention, Antitrust, and Targeted Relief
The Democratic approach focuses on structural
intervention by targeting perceived corporate price gouging, expanding social safety nets, subsidizing green energy transitions, and lowering specific household costs through government-backed programs (such as capped prescription drug prices and subsidized childcare or housing).
The Pitch:
- Tackling Corporate Greed: Framing inflation not just as a monetary phenomenon, but because of corporate consolidation and “price-gouging,” Democrats propose aggressive antitrust enforcement and price caps.
- Targeted Investments: Subsidies for green tech, healthcare, and education aimed at lowering the baseline cost of living for working-class families.
Graded Against the Data: C+
- The Good: Targeted relief—such as capping insulin costs or investing in affordable housing infrastructure—provides immediate, tangible aid to specific vulnerable populations. Antitrust crackdowns can also foster healthier long-term market competition.
- The Flaw: Independent economists and watchdogs point out that massive federal spending injections in an economy can inadvertently fuel aggregate demand, keeping inflation sticky rather than taming it. Furthermore, heavy-handed market interventions—like price controls or stringent regulatory compliance mandates—can sometimes disincentivize production, leading to supply bottlenecks or shortages that ironically worsen the long-term affordability of goods and housing. Broad structural plans also often carry multi-trillion-dollar price tags that spark fierce debates over national debt and taxation.
The Verdict: A Bipartisan Blind Spot
When we grade both sides against the same data, a hard truth emerges: both parties are peddling oversimplified solutions to a deeply complex, structural problem.
The American affordability crisis stems from a tariff regime, an international oil blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, converging global supply-chain shifts, structural housing shortages, aging infrastructure, and a shifting energy landscape.
- The Right’s reliance on tariffs threatens to hike the very prices they promise to lower.
- The Left’s reliance on sweeping federal spending and market controls risks keeping inflationary pressures alive.
Until our political class moves past populist slogans, name-calling and stereotypes, and confronts the difficult trade-offs of zoning reform, sustainable fiscal policy, and balanced trade, the “Party of Affordability” will remain a title claimed on the campaign trail—and elusive at the checkout counter. The cost-of-living crisis will persist—regardless of who holds power.
The Editorial Board
Moderate Voices of America (MVA)
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