“Fighting for an Affordable America” is a Leading Issue for Arizona and National Democrats This Midterm Election

There are many issues Democrats can run on in the 2026 Midterms.

Trump and MAGA Republicans’ Project 2025 rape of the social welfare safety net and disregard for the needs of Americans who make less than six-figure salaries.

Trump and MAGA Republicans’ perversion of the rule of law, where their allies, including the Epstein Class pedophile ring and donors, get legal protection while opponents are persecuted and prosecuted on baseless charges, grants are cancelled to states that voted for Kamala Harris, innocent immigrations are ruthlessly taken off the street by Trump’s ICE-Gestapo and shoved into American Concentration Camps and/or gunned down on the nation’s streets along with American Citizens.

Trump and MAGA Republicans open corruption and grift to the tenth power with open stock manipulation, pardons for sale, family financial enrichment, and influence peddling.

Trump and MAGA Republicans’ naked power grab to recreate the nation’s election system in their own image to, in the American Duce’s words, keep the former party of Lincoln in control for the “Next hundred years.”

Donald Trump’s incompetence and Project 2025 mismanagement of the nation’s economic and international standing with his tariffs, attack on the sustainability industries of the future, war on science and history, the antagonizing of N.A.T.O. Allies with his threats against Greenland, and war of choice against Iran.

While Democrats have and will continue to point out these profound deficiencies of the Trump-MAGA-White Nationalist-Fascist-Back to the Gilded Age-Know Nothing Regime and their attacks on the modern American Political and Economic System, the key leading economic issue that Democrats have been emphasizing is affordability and how to help the American People get ahead and have a chance at achieving the American Dream.

Yesterday, at a rally for Pennsylvania House Candidate Bob Brooks, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries kicked off the 100 Days to the Election Fighting for an Affordable America Campaign.

In his remarks to the crowd, which also featured Pennsylvania Governor and potential 2028 Presidential Candidate Josh Shapiro, the person who could be the next Speaker of the House said on the issue of affordability and the further squeezing of the American People under Donald Trump:

“…Work is about more than just a paycheck. It’s about an idea at the heart of our great country. When you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to live a middle-class life, a comfortable life, an affordable life, live the good life. We know what that looks like.

A good paying job, good housing, good healthcare, a good education for your children, and when it’s all said and done, a good retirement. That’s the American dream. That’s the American dream.

And no one has done more to make that dream a reality than the men and women of organized labor. But in communities like this one, in the working-class neighborhoods I represent, back home in Brooklyn and in hometowns all across this country, that American dream is fading. And the leaders who should be fighting to keep the dream alive are putting it further out of reach.

Two years ago, Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans told you they’d bring grocery prices down on day one. They told you they’d stop spending money on stupid wars in the Middle East. They promised to bring energy prices down by 50% and get gas below $2 a gallon.

The exact opposite has happened. For two years, Americans have been wondering, were MAGA Republicans lying or are they just incompetent? We now have an answer. It’s all of the above.

All of the above. Republicans tell us that we’re living in a new golden age. Really? More like a golden age for Donald Trump…”

“…When the president was asked about the state of the economy, he gave himself an A+. Republicans believe the affordability crisis is a hoax. Republicans don’t give a damn about the personal financial situation of the American people.

Republicans have made clear they love inflation. The cost of living is way up. Housing is unaffordable.

Gas prices are out of control. Republicans have mismanaged the economy. They don’t deserve an A-plus grade.

They deserve a pink slip, and in November, America is going to fire them. Now, unlike the MAGA Republicans, the Democratic Party is not a cult of personality. We’re a coalition of public servants…”

“…We are one big tent united by a shared commitment to fighting for an affordable America. When you put us back in charge of the United States House of Representatives, you’ll get a Congress that speaks up for everyday Americans and a Congress that stands up to an out-of-control president, because we believe for the American people, the high cost of living isn’t an academic exercise…”

“…As House Democrats, we will build an economy that works for everyday Americans and drive down the high cost of living in every possible area because life is too expensive. That means the grocery store, the gas pump, and your housing costs. It also means that you should be able to go see a doctor and get the care that you need whenever illness strikes. Now, the one Big Ugly Bill passed by MAGA extremists contained the largest cut to Medicaid in American history in order to provide massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors.

And by refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, more than 20 million Americans have experienced skyrocketing health insurance premiums, in some cases increasing by more than $1.5 billion or more than $1,000 per month. MAGA Republicans can find money for Donald Trump’s reckless war of choice in Iran. They can find money for his king-like ballroom.

They can find money to unleash ice brutality on American citizens and law-abiding immigrant families. But when it comes to making your life more affordable, the cookie jar is empty. That will change on day one when you put Democrats in charge of Congress because we are fighting for an affordable America.

Now, making life more affordable shouldn’t be a partisan issue. It’s an American issue. It’s about everyday Americans, like all of you who are here with us today…”

“…House Democrats are fighting to lower the cost of groceries, gas, and housing. House Democrats are committed to making healthcare affordable. Because we believe that access to high-quality healthcare cannot simply be a privilege available only to the wealthy, the well-off, and the well-connected. Affordable healthcare must be a right available to every single American…”

While Leader Jeffries’ remarks lacked many specific policy recommendations on how to make life affordable again for Americans, many Democratic officeholders at the state and federal level have either enacted or proposed solutions to the affordability crisis.

In Arizona, Democratic Legislators, led by State Senator Priya Sundareshan and State Representative Oscar DeLos Santos, advanced “An Arizona We Could Afford Agenda,” which did, through the budget process, secure protections for Arizonans from rising utility costs, access to health care and school meal assistance, and middle-class tax cuts.

Other measures like paid family and sick leave did not get a hearing in the Republican controlled legislature and are waiting for a power shift to Democrats for this legislation to move through the State Capitol to hopefully Governor Katie Hobb’s desk in 2027.

Governor Hobbs is running for re-election based on the affordability measures she has put through and her Arizona First Agenda compared to Republicans’ Rich First Platform.

Members of Arizona’s Democratic Congressional Delegation have advanced affordability agendas.

Representative Yassamin Ansari and the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s affordability proposals include:

• Double pay for working overtime.
• Child Care for $10 a day.
• Two weeks’ paid vacation.
• Federally produced and cheaper prescription drugs.
• $20,000 in downpayment assistance for new homebuyers.
• Cracking down on grocery stores and AI price gougers.
• Taxing big oil and giving that money to consumers.

Representative Greg Stanton and the New Democrat House Coalition have an American Promise Agenda which includes affordability measures like:

• Ending Trump’s Tariffs. 
• Extending the Affordable Care Act Tax Credits.
• Restore health care access to the 12 million people who have lost Medicare and Medicaid. 
• Lower prescription drug prices.
• Delivering a National Paid Family and Medical Leave Program.
• Reward businesses that provide paid apprenticeships
• Invest in family farms, expand rural housing and broadband. 
• Build four million new homes in ten years.
• An innovation agenda that rivals and surpasses China.
• Promote AI Technology with appropriate guardrails. 
• Invest in STEM and Innovation degree fields.

Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego has championed a Rebuilding the Middle Class Plan which includes:

• Raise Wages and Improve Benefits like increasing the minimum wage to $20.00 an hour and strengthening labor unions. 
• Create and Protect High Quality Blue Collar Jobs in the service, transportation, and manufacturing sectors. 
• Restore Worker Trust in Government by recreating New Deal-style jobs programs. 
• Expand Job-Creating Entrepreneurship, Focusing Outside of Superstar Cities and investing in small towns, rural communities, and tribal areas. 
• Help Workers Find Jobs Faster, including expanding apprenticeships.

These ideas fall in line with other proposals from other Democratic stakeholders across the country.

Economist and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has put forth a ten-point American Affordability Plan, which includes:

• We’ll eliminate Trump’s across-the-board tariffs.
• Getting energy prices down by ending Trump’s war in Iran and shifting to renewable sources of energy.
• Busting up monopolies.
• Fighting for stronger unions.
• Raising the national minimum wage to $20 an hour.
• Making housing more affordable.
• Making Medicare available to everyone.
• Child Care and Elder Care Assistance.
• Paid Family Leave.
• Taxing the wealthiest to pay for this.

Another idea that should be receiving national attention and become a rallying cry on the campaign trail is Hawaii Senator Andy Kim’s MediKids Proposal, which calls for guaranteeing all young people health care from birth to when they turn 26.

In his video remarks, Senator Kim said:

“Right now, 4.4 million American children do not have health care coverage.

And one in three kids is underinsured. That’s about 23 million kids in this country whose health care coverage is unable to meet their needs. That’s absolutely unacceptable.

Every child should have health care. Every child should have the ability to go to a doctor when they’re sick. Every child deserves to be healthy.

And that’s why I’m introducing MediKids. Health care for all children. A policy solution that would automatically enroll every child in health care coverage at birth.

Because the system we have right now isn’t working. Because healthy kids make healthy adults. And that makes for a healthier, stronger future for our country.

Because as a parent, you deserve to be able to provide care for your kids without worrying about going into debt, emptying your savings, or straining the family budget. And because I’m teaching my sons that we all have a responsibility to care for each other. There are 4.4 million children without health care in this country.

Even more, who are underinsured. Let’s build a healthier future. Let’s make that number zero.”

In an appearance on Jen Psaki’s show on MSNOW, former Transportation Secretary and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg linked affordability and economic outcomes to needed political and institutional reforms, made easier by Trump’s dismantling of many of the services provided by the Executive Branch.

In his remarks to Psaki, Buttigieg said:

“…Our economic problems are related to the problems in our political system. There is a conventional wisdom out there among some political strategists saying, don’t talk about what’s wrong with our democracy because we should only be talking about the kitchen table. To me, those two things are intimately connected.

The reason we are paying more at the pump, the reason our mortgages are unaffordable in this country is directly related to the fact that there is no accountability in our government and there won’t be until we fix Congress, fix the Supreme Court, fix money in politics, and we absolutely cannot be afraid to talk about those big reforms as well as the ins and outs of health care, education, the things we want to do on day one. Accountability, you hear that word a lot. I hear it a lot...”

“…A Democratic-led Congress has to establish accountability, first of all, around the just naked corruption that is going on. This is not a political question. The idea that the American people shouldn’t have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxes on retrofitting a secondhand jumbo jet, the idea that there is something highly questionable about people from the president of the United States to a lot of other officials getting rich on stock trades while making decisions that move markets, dealing with that is not some kind of partisan conquest. That’s something that most Americans can actually come together around…”

“…I’m saying that in order to get anywhere, even as an ideological moderate, you have to be ready for radical change in our institutions.

What does that look like? Some of the changes I was just talking about around money and politics, around Congress and how elections work, certainly making sure that we have the voting rights reform and protections that are doubly important because of what has been done to systematically tear down Black political representation in order to try to keep this Republican Congress in power. But look, we’ve also got to recognize there are certain institutions that we have cherished as Democrats that are important institutions that probably can’t and shouldn’t go back to the old way. It was criminally wrong to basically gut the Department of Education as they have done.

I also don’t think our project is to make the Department of Education look just the way it looked the minute before Donald Trump got here. I could say the same thing about foreign aid. Again, criminally wrong to have demolished the U.S. Agency for International Development.

That doesn’t mean that we should put it back just the way it was. I know a lot of mayors who would love to see dramatic change in how housing and urban development works and how federal dollars can or can’t be used to help make housing more affordable in cities. We should be listening to them, thinking about how we build things from the ground up, because there will be a moment when we have that clean sheet, that fresh start.

I hate how we got here. We got here because of all of the destruction that’s going on in this moment. But it’s also a chance to build something new on sometimes the rubble of these institutions that were frankly already rickety, already showing their age years before we got to this moment.

If you ask most people who have worked in Democrat administrations, they would say things were too bureaucratic, too, and too bloated, too. It’s just how you do it. We don’t have nearly enough conversations about the path forward, so you have agreed to stick around…”

When Trump and Republicans are asked to comment on Affordabilty, they take one of three positions.

• It is a hoax or not important.
• Affordability is all because of Biden/Harris policies. This, in a word, is bullshit, and it is annoying that Democrats do not publicly defend that Administration and its record of bringing the country back after Mr. Trump’s mismanagement of the Coronavirus caused the first inflationary spike in what Americans buy in 2021 and 2022.
• These ideas are all signs, according to the Republican Fascists, that the Democrats are being overrun by Communists.

The reactions of an unserious political party whose leaders are grounded in unreality.

Democrats need to take all these wonderful ideas on combatting the affordability crisis, many of which have been advanced over the last 50 years, compose a united platform like the Republican Contract with America in 1994, and use that program to propel them to victory in November.