An advocacy group's report highlights the financial impact Trump administration policies is having on Wisconsin residents. (Getty Images)

Democrats hoping to end GOP control of the state Legislature and Congress are stepping up their argument that the administration of President Donald Trump along with Republican majorities in both the U.S. and Wisconsin capitols have driven up costs for average members of the public.

On Monday, an advocacy group that opposes the Trump administration released a six-page document that focuses on Wisconsin examples of higher costs across the board, from groceries to utilities to health care. The report, from Defend America Action, draws on news reports, government data and polling to argue that federal policies “are ripping away Wisconsinites’ economic security.”

The opening page of the document — signed by five state Senate Democrats and Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski — declares, “Between his massive cuts to government spending, the Trump-GOP Big, Ugly Bill, and his disastrous tariff regime, Trump’s agenda is hurting the local economy in all areas, stoking a dire affordability crisis as food prices, energy bills, health care costs, and housing costs spike.”

“What I am hearing in the district every day is that ‘Everything is getting more expensive. I am working more and I am getting less in return,’” state Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), one of the signers, told the Wisconsin Examiner via email.

“The common theme here is who is looking out for them,” Drake said. “Trump and the Republican Party are praising higher stocks, but that investment is not trickling down to working families, and they are paying the price.”

Combining the answers of people who are “very concerned” and “somewhat concerned,” the report cites the finding that 89% of people who answered a Marquette Law School poll released Oct. 29, 2025, were worried about the state of the economy. The poll also found 95% of those surveyed were concerned about inflation.

The same poll found that 80% of Wisconsin voters surveyed were concerned about housing affordability, including 53% who answered that they were “very concerned.”

The October poll was the most recent from Marquette Law School focusing on Wisconsin’s 2026 elections and voter issues. (Two subsequent Marquette poll reports, in early November and late January, surveyed national samples on national issues, focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court.)

The report marshals data from across nearly all sectors of the economy. It cites the persistence of higher grocery prices and increases in health insurance premiums, particularly for people who buy their own coverage through the HealthCare.gov marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act.

Enhanced subsidies to lower the cost of those premiums expired at the end of 2025. A bill to extend them for another three years has passed the U.S. House but has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), who also signed the report, said in an interview that he recently heard from a farmer in his district whose insurance through the marketplace, which used to cost $50 per month last year, is now $500 per month due to the loss of the subsidies.

“It went from $600 a year, I guess, to $6,000,” Pfaff said. Referring to the federal government’s decision to end enhanced subsidies, he added, “When we are telling the self-employed and those at small businesses that purchase their health insurance though the marketplace that, you know what, we’re not going to do that anymore because of partisan politics, that causes real consternation.”

The report also cites recent data showing a cooling job market and cuts to clean energy projects that had been initiated under President Joe Biden. It blames agricultural economic turmoil on see-sawing tariffs as well as, in some sectors, the Trump administration’s focus on deporting immigrants.

Farmers “are being squeezed on both ends,” Pfaff said, with the rising costs for seed, fertilizer, machinery repairs and other inputs.

“When farmers need certainty, you add on top of that the fact that they continue to struggle to move their crop commodities in the marketplace because of this ping pong that’s being played at the national level by the White House when it comes to trade policy,” Pfaff said. “When you have a situation in which grocery prices are rising, but yet farmers struggle in order to put a crop in the ground, there’s something wrong.”

The Defend America Action report pins responsibility for other impending cost increases on the 2025 federal tax- and spending-cut bill that Republicans in Congress passed and Trump signed in July. The bill rolled back clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and also made changes to Medicaid and to the federal Supplemental Food Assistance Program (SNAP).

A clean energy advocacy organization has estimated that canceling clean energy tax credits will raise utility costs for Wisconsin consumers by 13% to 22%. Gov  Tony Evers has projected Medicaid changes could cost Wisconsin $284 million.

A separate report Feb. 3 from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that overall the megabill — referred to by Trump and Republican authors as  the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — “will redistribute trillions of dollars upward over the next decade, making it harder for families with modest incomes to meet their basic needs while helping those at the top accumulate more wealth.”

The bill cuts taxes by $4.5 trillion, primarily benefiting the wealthiest households, the CBBP reported. The bottom 20% of households by income “will lose more from the cuts in health coverage, food assistance, and other programs than they will gain in tax cuts,” the CBPP said, citing Congressional Budget Office data. 

For the bottom 10% of earners, average household incomes will fall by $1,200, or 3.1%, the report said, and the top 10% of earners  will see their household incomes rise by $13,600 on average, or 2.7%.

Drake told the Wisconsin Examiner that she believes the Trump administration’s actions attacking democracy and targeting immigrants are aimed at distracting people from policies that redistribute wealth upwards.

“Affordability is the underlying issue affecting everyone regardless of who you are,” said Drake. “Instead of helping people and holding those with the most power accountable, he wants Americans to blame our neighbors and communities of different backgrounds for the reasoning behind their struggles.” 

President Donald Trump waved and pointed to the crowd as he exited the stage following his remarks at the Iowa State Fairgrounds July 3, 2025 at an event kicking off a yearlong celebration leading up to America’s 250th anniversary. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to Iowa on Jan. 27 to deliver a speech focused on the economy and energy, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told reporters Wednesday. 

The president is expected to begin weekly travel ahead of the midterm elections — in which the GOP is aiming to improve its razor-thin majority in the U.S. House and maintain its lead in the U.S. Senate. 

The anticipated travel will also come as Trump seeks to boost his affordability policy blitz and as the cost of living marks a focal point of the midterm elections. On Tuesday, stocks plunged after Trump doubled down on threats to acquire Greenland and pledged tariffs on eight European countries that opposed his plans. 

While traveling to Davos, Switzerland, with Trump for the World Economic Forum, Wiles told the traveling press that officials in Trump’s Cabinet would also be increasing their domestic travel. 

The timing and location of the Iowa event have yet to be announced. Trump last visited the Hawkeye State in July 2025, which marked the beginning of a yearlong celebration heading into the 250th anniversary of the country. 

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance is slated to be in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Thursday for a roundtable with local leaders and community members, according to his office Wednesday. 

The vice president will also give remarks centered on “restoring law and order in Minnesota.”

 Thousands of Minnesotans have been protesting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence there following the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by a federal agent.

Vance is also set to make a visit to an industrial shipping facility, in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday, according to his office. 

Vance is set to deliver remarks there focused on the administration’s “commitment to lower prices, bigger paychecks, and creating more good-paying jobs in Ohio and across the Midwest,” per his office. 

An aerial view of residential housing under construction at a planned community in Fontana, California, on Sept. 17, 2025. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats began detailing their affordability agenda Thursday ahead of the November midterm elections, starting with a focus on housing. 

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during an event at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, that if Democrats regain control of the House and Senate they would pass legislation to expand rental assistance, reduce barriers to home ownership, build more housing and address predatory practices. 

Schumer listed several statistics he finds concerning, including that the median price of a home has gone up by 55% since the coronavirus pandemic, that rent has risen by one-third and that the average age for a first-time home buyer is 40. 

“That’s a record high,” he said. “That’s a devastating statistic that should shake up everyone in a position of power at the federal, state or local levels.”

Schumer said the outline for housing is just the first of several cost-of-living policy proposals Democrats will detail this year as they seek to sway voters in key districts and states to vote for their candidates over Republicans.

Democrats, he said, will also focus on how to curb the rising cost of groceries, electricity, child care and health care as part of the midterms messaging. 

On housing, Schumer said Democrats will focus on legislation that would 

• incentivize construction companies to build more housing to address shortages throughout the country;
• expand rental assistance, including Section 8 vouchers for low-income families;
• reduce barriers to home ownership;
• expand the low-income housing tax credit;
• allow the Department of Housing and Urban Development to use the Defense Production Act to purchase “housing materials in short supply”;
• create an agency focused on advanced research into housing issues, similar to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and
• block “predatory companies” from being “allowed to gobble up entire neighborhoods so easily and turn them into profit machines.”

Democratic bills would provide down payment assistance, lower the cost of mortgage insurance, expand access to portable mortgages and “reform homeowners insurance which is now at a crisis level and so important for people who can’t afford that down payment,” Schumer said.  

Democrats have relatively good odds of winning back control of the House during the November midterm elections, especially since the president’s party tends to lose that chamber two years after taking power. 

Campaigns to regain control of the Senate will be much more difficult for Democrats, who face challenges keeping seats in Georgia and Michigan, while trying to flip Republican seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio. 

Even if voters were to give Democrats control of Congress, leaders in the party would still need some Republican buy-in to move legislation past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster and need President Donald Trump to sign legislation into law, unless they had the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override a veto. 

A ‘family conversation’

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said during a panel discussion with Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth that was moderated by CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden that he’s been “radicalized on housing” and pressed for members of the party to talk realistically about issues with supply and affordability. 

“And the reason is that our shortage nationwide, but especially in Hawaii, is so acute that people can’t make the math work anymore,” Schatz said. “In Hawaii, people are paying more than 50%, all-in, of their income for housing, either rental housing or paying a mortgage. And what I have come to realize is that we are the problem.”

Schatz argued that the government “is the primary impediment to alleviating the shortage” and said that realization has led him to have some “very difficult conversations.” 

In Hawaii, he said, there are environmental and cultural protections intended to safeguard “special places” but that have ended up applied more broadly, impeding housing development. 

“They were not originally conceived to prevent a walk-up apartment building on the corner of Eisenberg and King to house Native Hawaiian families,” Schatz said. “And yet those same laws are being weaponized against people in Hawaii even being able to live in the state of Hawaii.”

Schatz said Democrats must be honest with voters about what their housing policies would mean for communities throughout the country, contending the party needs to “solve the politics” around expanded housing before it can tackle the policy debate. 

“I actually think we have to have this family conversation around the politics of housing and realize that some of our base voters in the suburbs, who are otherwise good all the way down the line on all the progressive issues, also want to prevent a nurse or a firefighter or the disabled or the elderly or the student from living anywhere near them,” Schatz said. “And we have to have that conversation in the progressive coalition.”

Rethinking inspections, other processes

Duckworth said some solutions to housing could come through rethinking the processes in place now, similar to how the Department of Veterans Affairs changed its approach to homeless veterans. 

“VA used to say, ‘You have to get clean and sober, and then we’ll give you a voucher to get into an apartment.’ And so it made no sense, right?” Duckworth said. 

“So we had to change the thinking to what the homelessness community had been working on, which is reduction of harm — get them into the housing and then work on getting them clean and sober,” she continued. “And by changing that thought, we were able to immediately start pulling veterans off the streets, put them into housing units where they immediately were also getting counseling, getting treatment.”

Duckworth compared the sometimes slow process of housing inspections that can stop construction with the way the government approaches vehicle safety as one possible way to get things moving faster. 

“With automobiles, we say, ‘This car that you’re manufacturing must be able to withstand a crash at 35 miles an hour into a brick wall.’ And then when they meet and get that car approved, when we go buy that car, we don’t have to take that car to get it inspected from top to bottom, like we do with homes,” Duckworth said. 

She added: “So why would we not say to homebuilders, especially (prefabricated) homes, if you come to VA and you are willing to get two models of your home, pre-inspected, pre-approved, then when a veteran builds a new home and they say, ‘Hey, I’m going to choose one of these models that already has a VA good housekeeping seal of approval,’ they can shortcut that inspection process.”

(Getty Images)

This article first appeared on KFF Health News.

As Congress debates whether to extend the temporary federal subsidies that have helped millions of Americans buy health coverage, a crucial underlying reality is sometimes overlooked: Those subsidies are merely a band-aid covering the often unaffordable cost of health care.

California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and five other states have set caps on health care spending in a bid to rein in the intense financial pressure felt by many families, individuals and employers who every year face increases in premiums, deductibles and other health-related expenses.

Hospitals and other health care providers are citing Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump in July, as one more reason to challenge those limits.

The law is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade, which mathematically should help the overall health care system meet the caps. But the law is also expected to increase the number of uninsured Americans, mostly Medicaid beneficiaries, by an estimated 10 million people. Health care analysts predict hospitals and other providers will raise prices to cover the double whammy of lost Medicaid revenue and the cost of caring for an influx of newly uninsured patients.

Whether regulators in some states will allow providers to justify higher prices and exceed the spending caps is unclear. Only California and Oregon can penalize providers financially if they fail to meet targets.

“Are we going to say, ‘That’s OK’? Or are we going to say, ‘Well, you exceeded the target. We’re still going to penalize you for that’?” said Richard Pan, a former state lawmaker and a member of the California Office of Health Care Affordability’s board. “That has not yet been decided.”

The California Hospital Association, the industry’s main state lobbying group, filed a lawsuit in October asking a state court to strike down the spending caps, which it argued fail to account for all the cost pressures hospitals face. Those pressures, it said, include an aging, sicker population; the rising cost of labor; expensive advances in medical technology; large capital outlays on required seismic retrofitting; and changes in federal policy, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The hospital group’s lawsuit also asserted that the state affordability office, by hastily imposing ill-considered cost-cutting targets, was undermining its other key mission of improving health care access, quality and equity.

California’s affordability office last year set a five-year target to cap statewide spending growth, starting at 3.5% in 2025 and declining to 3% by 2029. The annual caps apply to a wide range of health care entities, including hospitals, medical groups, insurers and other payers.

Earlier this year, it imposed much lower spending growth caps — starting at 1.8% in 2026 and declining to 1.6% by 2029 — for seven “high-cost” hospitals.

“The spending caps set by politically appointed bureaucrats could force cuts that result in many Californians traveling farther for care, facing longer emergency room wait times, experiencing more overcrowding and losing access to critical services,” Carmela Coyle, the hospital association’s president and CEO, said in an October press release.

The California attorney general’s office, which will represent the affordability agency, has not yet filed a response to the hospital group’s complaint and did not respond to a request for comment.

Hospitals’ pushback

California is not the only state taking a close look at hospital prices, which are widely considered a primary driver of health care costs.

“States, armed with information that points to payments to hospitals as a driver of what is way beyond affordable commercial premiums, have begun to take increasingly targeted actions focused on commercial hospital prices,” said Michael Bailit, founder of the Needham, Massachusetts-based consultancy Bailit Health, which has advised multiple states, including California, on ways to tame health care spending. “It is not surprising that the hospital industry is going to oppose such state actions.”

In its lawsuit, the California Hospital Association said the affordability office’s own report showed that pharmaceutical and insurance companies are largely responsible for high costs.

Hospitals in some states with cost growth limits, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, have expressed objections similar to the ones raised in the California lawsuit. They could follow their counterparts in California if their lawsuit succeeds, said Peter Lee, who led California’s Affordable Care Act marketplace, Covered California, for over a decade and is now a senior scholar at Stanford Medicine’s Clinical Excellence Research Center.

Lee said the work of California’s affordability office and similar agencies in other states is just about the only systemwide effort being made to cut health care costs. They are basically saying, “‘Look, health care is taking money away from education, it is taking money away from the environment, it is taking money away from everything in the public sector, and in the private sector it is taking money away from wages,’” he said. “‘We don’t know how you, the health system, are going to do it, but it is your job not just to provide quality but to lower costs. Here’s the target.’”

To be sure, achieving the cost savings that California and those other states are seeking is no easy lift. It will ultimately require persuading large, financially powerful players that compete fiercely for health care dollars to adopt a different mindset and begin cooperating to reduce costs instead. And that, in many cases, will mean lower revenue.

But the status quo, as many people know all too well, means continued financial pain for millions.

In early 2020, Estevan Rodriguez, a bartender at California’s Monterey Beach Hotel, had surgery for a staph infection in his leg. The bill came to nearly $168,000. His insurance paid most of it, but he still owed $5,665, which took him two years to pay, more than $200 every month. “It may not be a lot to some people, but it was a lot to me,” Rodriguez said.

He said he dropped his Hulu subscription, switched to a lower-cost cellphone, and got cheaper car insurance. He started going to food banks rather than the grocery store, he said, and had a lot less time with his kids, because he was constantly working to pay off the hospital bill.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where Rodriguez had his surgery, is one of the seven hospitals identified by California’s affordability office as high-cost. A study by the office attributed high hospital prices in Monterey County to a lack of market competition “rather than higher operating costs or superior quality of care.”

The Monterey hospital referred a request for comment about its “high-cost” designation to the California Hospital Association. CHA spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea declined to comment beyond the language of the lawsuit and Coyle’s press release statement.

Reduced competition

Health care analysts worry the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce market competition even further by stressing already weak hospitals, leading some to shut services, merge with larger health systems, or close. One study estimates 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closing nationwide.

Less competition, in addition to fewer Medicaid dollars and an increase in uninsured patients, will only strengthen the incentive of health systems with the requisite market clout to raise their commercial prices, increasing premiums for employers and individuals.

“We think commercial prices will continue to increase as health care providers, and hospitals in particular, will seek to preserve or increase their revenue,” said Rachel Block, a program officer at the Milbank Memorial Fund, a foundation that focuses on health equity.

That in turn could pose a challenge to state affordability regulators tasked with overseeing compliance with growth targets for health care spending.

California’s affordability office is required to consider mitigating factors, including changes in federal and state laws. But some of its board members have expressed skepticism about letting hospitals offset Medicaid losses with higher commercial prices.

“There’s a lot of talk about using HR 1 and other federal policies as an excuse to raise prices on commercial payers,” Ian Lewis, an affordability office board member and policy director for UNITE HERE Local 2, a hospitality workers union in the Bay Area, said at the agency’s July board meeting, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill. “There’s no more blood to be squeezed from this stone.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

President Donald Trump addresses the nation in an address from the Diplomatic Room of the White House on Dec. 17, 2025. (Photo by Doug Mills - Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As Americans continue to face rising prices ahead of year-end holidays, President Donald Trump blamed inflation and health care costs on his predecessor during a prime-time speech Wednesday in which he also claimed to have fixed the issues.

Trump “inherited a mess” and has turned the United States into the “envy of the entire globe” by imposing an immigration crackdown, tariffs and tax breaks, he said. 

“Over the past 11 months, we have brought more positive change to Washington than any administration in American history. There’s never been anything like it, and I think most would agree I was elected in a landslide,” Trump said.

Standing before a backdrop of Christmas decorations, Trump also promised $1,776 checks would arrive for members of the United States military by Christmas.

And he continued to blame Democrats for health care costs that are projected to skyrocket next month when tax credits for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans expire.

Nearly a year into his second term, Trump remains fixated on blaming former President Joe Biden even as his own approval ratings sink, according to numerous recent polls.

A plaque below Biden’s photo in Trump’s newly installed “Presidential Walk of Fame” display reads “Sleepy Joe Biden,” according to reports from journalists present at the White House Wednesday.

“When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans. This happened during a Democrat administration, and it’s when we first began hearing the word ‘affordability,’” Trump said.

Consumer price index data released Thursday for September through November show the overall cost of goods rose 2.7% over the past 12 months, after rising 3% for the 12 months recorded at the end of September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When Trump took office in January 2025, it was 3% over the previous 12 months. The bureau did not analyze data for October 2025 because of the government shutdown.

In recent weeks, Trump has said “affordability” is a “hoax.”

Yet the bulk of Trump’s somewhat hastily scheduled address — the White House announced it Tuesday — focused on lowering costs for housing, electricity and health care.

Trump announced he will send a $1,776 “warrior dividend” to every U.S. servicemember. The amount is in honor of the year of the country’s  founding, Trump said. Checks are “already on the way,” he said.

That could add up to as much as $2.6 billion, according to a White House estimate Wednesday night that 1.45 million service members would receive the payment.

Health care costs

He also touted trumprx.gov, where he said Americans can find “unprecedented price reductions” on prescription drugs starting in January.

“These big price cuts will greatly reduce the cost of health care,” Trump said.

He boosted a Republican plan on Capitol Hill to fund individual health savings accounts, or HSAs, in annual amounts of $1,000 to $1,500 depending on age and poverty level. An HSA is not health insurance.

“I want the money to go directly to the people so you can buy your own health care. You’ll get much better health care at a much lower price,” Trump said.

Four House Republicans defected Wednesday to sign a Democrat-led petition to bypass Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and force a floor vote in January on extending health insurance premium subsidies for people who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

‘My favorite word’

Trump spent several minutes addressing the economy, stating that prices on groceries and fuel are coming down. Both claims are false, according to government data.

“I am bringing those high prices down and bringing them down fast,” Trump said.

The latest consumer price index for September showed gasoline prices rose 4.1% over the past 12 months, and “was the largest factor in the all items monthly increase,” increasing 1.5% over the previous month.

Food prices rose faster than overall inflation in recent months, according to the government’s latest data. Food prices in August were 3.2% higher than a year ago, according to the data.

Still, Trump claimed an economic turnaround that he credited to his international trade policy.

“Much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs — my favorite word ‘tariffs’ — which for many decades have been used successfully by other countries against us, but not anymore,” he said.

The U.S. ended fiscal year 2025 with a deficit reaching nearly $1.8 trillion, or roughly 6% of the domestic economy’s gross domestic product.

Trump unilaterally imposed a global 10% tariff on all foreign goods in April, plus higher tariffs on many major trading partners, including the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether Trump’s emergency tariffs are legal.

The U.S. collected nearly $195 billion in customs duties in fiscal year 2025, up from $77 billion in fiscal 2024, according to the U.S. Treasury’s monthly statement.”

Americans have lost faith in Trump’s ability to handle the economy, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published Wednesday.

Trump received a 36% approval rating on his economic strategy, the lowest rating over the past six years that the survey has asked voters the question.

A Fox News poll released Nov. 19 found 76% of respondents saw the economy negatively. Of all voters polled, 41% approved and 58% disapproved of Trump’s performance. That’s down from the conservative news network’s poll of Biden’s approval ratings during the same point in his presidency, which the network says was 44%.

Mum on Venezuela

The president did not spend much time addressing his military campaign off the coast of Venezuela, despite declaring just 24 hours beforehand that the U.S. had formed a “blockade” in the Caribbean Sea.

Trump posted on his own social media platform Truth Social Tuesday night that Venezuela is “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.”

The campaign, which has become top of mind for many lawmakers on Capitol Hill, is about preventing drug smuggling to the U.S., Trump and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly said.

Democratic lawmakers are pressing the Trump administration to release unedited footage of a Sept. 2 strike that killed two shipwrecked individuals who were clinging to what was left of a boat after an initial strike.