Democrats last week won the largest House and Senate majorities for either party since Barack Obama’s 2008 landslide. It’s no secret what led to this Blue tsunami: after being elected in 2024 on a platform to “end inflation and make America affordable again,” President Trump spent two years doing precisely the opposite.
The new majority’s first priority in delivering a real affordability agenda will be fixing Trump’s biggest mistakes, such as by finding a responsible way to end the shambolic war with Iran that increased costs by nearly $1200 per American household. To that end, Democrats are likely to begin the next Congress by pursuing three consensus economic policy goals:
These are directionally good goals that victorious Democrats of all ideological stripes campaigned on. But accomplishing them will cost a significant amount of money, and they represent only the beginning of Democrats’ policy ambitions. The new Congress must recognize that they — and the next president — are about to inherit a massive budget hole from the Trump administration. Digging it deeper could worsen the very affordability problems Democrats are hoping to solve and squander the inroads they’ve just begun to build in red states. A durable affordability agenda must not only walk back Trump’s missteps but also do it in a fiscally responsible way.
