Will any of Trump’s affordability ‘spaghetti’ help the GOP in 2026?
Trump is throwing affordability ‘spaghetti at the wall’ — will anything stick for the midterm elections?
President Donald Trump is emptying a clip on affordability, a clear sign that economic concerns will dictate control of both congressional majorities in the 2026 midterm elections.
Since last November, when Democrats swept the major off-year elections, the president has unleashed a multitude of proposals to allay voters’ economic fears. Many would undoubtedly require new legislation to be enacted, while others, specifically delaying the implementation of certain sectoral tariffs, would directly undermine his policies from 2025.
However, Trump appears to be consciously trying to avoid a trap that hampered former President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections: ignoring public sentiment regarding the White House’s economic baseline and assuring that, with time, those policies will deliver results for American consumers.
“I think that what President Trump is doing, when it comes to tariffs and trying to rebuild our manufacturing base, is truly revolutionary. I also think that the president knows he hasn’t quite delivered the economic boom that he promised on the campaign trail,” one out-of-government Trump insider told the Washington Examiner. “This rash of proposals, on housing and the like, might seem like he’s just throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping that something will stick — but voters should take that as a signal that he’s willing to try anything to save the country from the damage that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris unleashed on the country over the past four years.”
White House spokesman Kush Desai gave a similar assessment to the Washington Examiner, suggesting that Trump is willing to try anything, even ideas offered by Democrats, “to turn the page on Joe Biden’s inflation and affordability crisis.”
“This overarching agenda has already cooled inflation and cut prices of many household essentials, with more progress in store for the American people,” he wrote in a statement.
Trump’s two biggest affordability swings have come in healthcare and housing, areas he has pressured Republicans to lean into following Democrats’ signals that they plan to campaign heavily on those matters leading up to November.
Trump told Republicans last week that Democrats “can’t win” in 2026 if the GOP legislates his suggestion of lowering health insurance costs by sending expanded Obamacare subsidies directly to American households, rather than insurance companies. The president went so far as to tell the Republican Conference that it needs to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment to guarantee a deal on the proposal, which caused significant heartburn among anti-abortion lawmakers.
And after Senate Democrats announced plans to unveil a midterm housing push of their own, the president proclaimed on social media that he would block private investment firms from purchasing residential housing properties, a policy long pushed for by progressives and championed by former Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2024 campaign.
Still, Trump skeptics are questioning whether Trump’s affordability blitz will actually deliver results for voters.
Kendall Whitmer, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, told the Washington Examiner that Trump “is now desperately chasing Democrats on the issues voters actually care about.”
“Trump is scrambling to catch up as he lays waste to our economy and his support among Americans falters. But it’s all half-assed at best: He’s falling asleep in White House meetings and is consumed by his West Wing remodel and running a foreign country to enrich his friends in the oil industry,” she said in a statement. “Democrats are delivering for working people this November — and Republicans and their wealthy special interests are headed for disaster.”
The White House has outright denied that Trump’s new economic ideas are a reaction to Democratic positions.
“President Trump has been talking about housing, health insurance, and drug pricing reform since he first ran for office in 2015, and undertook major initiatives on these fronts during his first term in office,” Desai wrote. “It’s Democrats who are ineptly trying to mimic President Trump and his record of success, not the other way around.”
Peter Loge, a professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs and the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication, told the Washington Examiner that voters are largely not yet seeing the benefits of stock market gains and GDP growth.
TRUMP CONSIDERS CLOSING AND RENOVATING HISTORIC DC GOLF COURSES
He also cautioned that Trump’s foreign policy and deportation agendas may even serve to undercut his focus on affordability.
“Headlines about federal law enforcement shooting protesters, the military in Venezuela, threatening to invade European allies, and ballroom controversies all distract from what most voters mostly care about,” he continued. “That’s not good news Republicans.”
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
