民主党人负担能力承诺将在新一届国会面临现实考验Democrats’ Affordability Vows Face Reality Test in New Congress

For the incoming Democratic majority in Congress, running on affordability and the cost of living was an obvious choice. Now comes the hard part: making good on all those campaign promises.

Democrats have said they will act quickly to restore health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and to reverse cuts to Medicaid and food benefits enacted by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. The likely Speaker of the House, New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries, has also signaled the chamber will vote to repeal some of the administration’s tariffs, which have driven up costs for businesses and consumers.

But the party will be constrained by President Donald Trump’s continued control of the executive branch and veto power, a dire fiscal outlook, and the likelihood of more Federal Reserve rate hikes. Then there’s a stubborn policy challenge: Cost-of-living issues such as housing and fuel defy easy fixes.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, warned of the risk of “political pandering” with the US deficit at about 6% of GDP, noting that more spending could make things worse in the short run.

The Democratic affordability agenda “is so highly dependent on us being responsible fiscally that once people come to understand you cannot bring interest rates down, you cannot bring prices down, you cannot bring wages up when your deficit is this high,” MacGuineas said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. She added that both spending cuts and tax increases are needed to bring rising debt under control.

Figuring out how to reward voters’ trust on the economy is already exposing divisions among Democrats, including some of those who scored the party’s most dramatic victories this month.

South Carolina Senator-elect Annie Andrews said she’d rather work with Trump to achieve her party’s goals on cost-of-living issues instead of focusing on a “retribution tour.”

“I’m willing to work with President Trump to secure the border, to stop these Medicaid cuts, to find a way out of this war,” Andrews said on Fox News after her election win. “Fighting the administration is not going to lower gas prices and grocery prices, it’s not going to solve the problems I’ve heard about the past 18 months.”But that instinct is anathema to many within the party, who see the nationwide rejection of Republicans as a mandate for bold policy moves, including on economic matters.

“When we get power, we need to do something with it,” said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of the firm Fight Agency, who worked on some of the party’s winning campaigns, including that of Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and, last year, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Katz spoke Tuesday at a forum organized by the progressive economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, where party consultants and lawmakers including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland compared notes on how to demonstrate to voters that they are acting on their economic concerns.

Since Trump initially signaled a willingness to work with Democrats, Warren has urged her party to “call his bluff” and send the president rafts of new legislation on everything from drug pricing to the war in Iran.

But party strategists also say that the use of the bully pulpit to win better pricing and treatment for consumers could be equally important – and possibly more effective than trying to wrangle intractable economic forces.

“The Democrats who just came in are in this curious spot because they have a mandate at the federal and state and local level, but at the federal level they don’t control the executive,” said Alvaro Bedoya, a former member of the Federal Trade Commission who previously served as counsel to then-Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota.

Bedoya pointed to the example of Instacart, which abandoned an experiment with variable grocery pricing within days of receiving public letters from Democratic senators complaining about the practice. That’s a strategy the party could replicate, he said in an interview.

“If you send an oversight letter to a publicly traded company, the response is often much quicker because that company has to respond to consumers and it has to respond to an outcry in the press,” Bedoya said.

During the Biden administration, congressional Democrats and the administration called out pharmaceutical companies over their patenting practices, leading some, such as Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca PLC and GlaxoSmithKline, to voluntarily cap inhaler prices at $35.

In the next Congress, Democrats could exert similar pressure on utility, healthcare and rental companies over price hikes or potential collusion, according to Alex Jacquez, Groundwork Collaborative’s senior vice president for policy, advocacy and research. The organization has been working with Congressional Democrats on economic strategy.

“You could imagine looking at algorithmic rent collusion or service fees for renters in the housing market as well, and then on healthcare costs,” Jacquez said, citing pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers.

Ben Harris, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and a former assistant secretary of Treasury under Janet Yellen, said that Democrats could also use their leverage during negotiations to pass annual budgets and raise the level of debt the US government can issue to force rollbacks of cuts to SNAP, Medicare and Medicaid. The US is expected to hit its congressionally-authorized debt limit next year.

Harris agreed that tensions between moderate and progressive Democrats on affordability will also play out, with farther-left voices advocating “a more heavy-handed approach” with policies like rent control, while centrist Democrats will focus more on housing, medical care and education. The greatest risk for the new majority, party organizers said, is failing to act boldly.

“We’re going to have a really hard time keeping our promises,” said Amanda Litman, a founder of Run For Something, a nonprofit that recruits candidates for political office. “And we’re seeing this now with Trump: Voters notice. Don’t write checks you can’t cash. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. And I’m worried. It’s a real concern.”