Affordability
The New York Times claims that Senate Republicans just “beat back Democratic proposals aimed at lowering costs” for “health care, housing, food and energy.”
IN FACT, the Democrat proposals don’t lower costs but shift them to taxpayers, who already pay an average of more than $50,000 per year in taxes for each household in the nation. Here are the specifics:
- To overcome Democrat filibusters that blocked funding to ICE and Border Patrol, Senate Republicans used a process called reconciliation to fund these agencies.
- When the Senate debated the bill, Democrats proposed a series of amendments to spend more money on groceries, healthcare, electricity, childcare, and other measures.
- The Democrat amendments were all “deficit-neutral reserve funds” or “points of order,” which have no force of law and would require added taxes, offsetting budget cuts, or more debt to enact.
- In 2024, U.S. federal, state and local governments collected a combined total of $7.6 trillion in taxes, amounting to $57,414 for each household in the U.S.
- In addition, governments spent $1.9 trillion more than they collected in revenues, an average of $14,374 per household, which will manifest in future taxes, inflation, lower wages, and other consequences.
- In their Party Platform and throughout modern history, Democrats have consistently pushed for more government spending on products and services like food, childcare, housing, education, and healthcare.
- Such spending makes these items more costly by stoking inflation, blinding consumers to prices, enabling waste, fraud & abuse, and creating layers of regulations and bureaucracy while increasing enticements to loaf and reducing incentives to work.
In keeping with the Democrats’ messaging, the New York Times recast these tax-and-spend welfare policies as “affordability.”
