Drink every time you hear a candidate mention “affordability.” Just kidding, please don’t. During Joe Biden’s presidency, congressional email newsletters almost never used the word—fewer than 10 times a month. By December 2025, on the back of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York, they used it 70 times a month. Today, you would be hard pressed to listen to a candidate’s stump speech without hearing the A word.
It’s no surprise affordability has become the focal point of midterm campaigns. Voters across the political spectrum cite cost of living as their top issue. And with gasoline above $4 a gallon, diesel hitting a record high, and mortgage climbing back over 7%, voters trust Democrats more than Republicans on the economy, something that hasn’t happened in nine years, according to an NBC News poll.
Democratic candidates are right to lean in on affordability messaging, but they should be wary of losing voters’ trust by overpromising and underdelivering. One way to do that is by focusing on just one side of affordability—prices, not incomes. There is no magic wand to bring prices back to what they were before the pandemic, though there are some ways to limit further price hikes. There are ways to help people afford more stuff by helping them earn more money.
Trying to bring down prices is a natural impulse. For years, Americans have been angry at broad inflation as well as longer-term price growth in areas like housing and health care. Over the course of the Biden presidency, consumer prices rose 21%. However, when President Biden left office, inflation was trending toward the 2% level the Federal Reserve targets; in other words, prices were beginning to stabilize. But President Trump has done his best to reignite inflation through tariffs and the war in Iran.
The challenge is it’s hard to deliver immediate relief on prices. The obvious answer is stop the bleeding; repeal Trump’s tariffs and stop the war in Iran. But, other avenues to provide short-term relief are more complicated. Take housing. Rent control can limit price hikes for some tenants. But, in the long run, rent control alone disincentives developers from building, which can exacerbate the housing supply shortage and drive up costs. Meanwhile, it’s not clear that keeping prices where they are will satisfy voters. Even just keeping prices stable at this point may not satisfy the electorate. Economists Neale Mahoney and Ryan Cummings found that historically people take three years to acclimate to broad price spikes.
While it is worth working to wrangle costs, Democrats must also pursue the flip side of affordability: how much money people have to spend.
For starters, raise the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. Passing the Raise the Wage Act, which increases the minimum wage to $17 by 2030 and gradually eliminates the lower minimum wage for tipped work, would benefit over 22 million Americans. Next, we can help empower workers. Passing the PRO Act would expand workers’ rights to organize unions and collectively bargain, at a time when union membership is only at about 10%, half of what it was a few decades ago.
Democrats should also use tax policy to put more money in the hands of working families. President Trump ended enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that doubled healthcare premiums for 20 million Americans. Democrats should work to reinstate them. In addition, Democrats can unite behind restoring and expanding the Advanced Child Tax Credit, which cut child poverty in half when it was in place, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which boosts the incomes of 24 million workers and families. Each of these policies would provide immediate benefits to the families who need it the most.
That is not to say these policies will be a political slam dunk. President Biden pushed for many of them, and in the last year of his term, wages were growing faster than inflation. We know how that turned out. But, if Democrats take the House and Senate, they have to show they understand Americans’ economic concerns and are serious about solving them. After accounting for inflation, wages have been falling for the past five months. That comes on top of President Trump and Republicans kicking 2.7 million people off SNAP and 10 million people off their health insurance.
Solving the affordability crisis takes a mix of smart short-term and long-term planning as well as ideas for lowering costs and raising incomes. For Democrats to keep voters' trust, they have to offer real solutions.