The Cost of an Ordinary Life: Your Paycheck Should Buy More Than an Economic Lecture

I bought a truck in January. It’s a beautiful Ford Ranger XLT that’s fun and remarkably smooth to drive and has more bells and whistles than any vehicle I’ve ever had — honestly, it’s tech-heavy, almost to a fault.

But after a decade of driving a plug-in electric hybrid that averaged 51 miles per gallon, 22 miles per gallon was quite an adjustment. Then gas prices went up. Obviously, we can lay the blame for the current high gas prices on trouble with Iran, but we’re still reeling from four years of Biden-era policies that built their foundation on higher prices for not just gas but also for everything else.

“The 2021-2022 inflation spike, the worst in four decades, was the price level adjusting to a $5 trillion flood of deficit spending that investors did not believe future fiscal surpluses would cover,” columnist Veronique de Rugy reminds us.

A 2022 report by Michael Faulkender that the America First Policy Institute published serves as a painful reminder today of the havoc Joe Biden and the Democrats wreaked upon this nation — and what awaits us if Democrats take the reins again:

As discussed in my recent testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, “When the economy reopened, prices started rising with inflation from June 2020 to February 2021, averaging 32 basis points per month. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law in March of 2021. Since then (through February 2022), monthly inflation has doubled to 64 basis points per month.” Inflation doubled following the enactment of the president’s socialist spending plan a full 10 months after the economy started reopening; that was not from COVID. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine occurred at the end of February 2022, but prices had already risen 7.9 percent in the twelve months ending in February 2022.

Democrats want to undo the 2017 tax cuts that President Donald Trump ushered in during his first term and solidified with the One Big Beautiful Bill last year. If they had their way, the Democrats would hand the average family of four a $1,700 tax increase. That’s on top of the cost of everything that families need to live their lives.

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The American people know what’s up. Recent polling shows that 88% of Americans surveyed favor the federal government letting them keep more of their money through increased domestic energy production and increased competition. Eighty-four percent believe that the federal government should cut spending, while 78% favor cutting taxes.

Energy prices, taxes, general inflation, overregulation, and government spending all show up in our household budgets. Our paychecks should buy more than an economic lecture as high taxes, burdensome regulation, bloated government, and a lack of competition in the marketplace take more and more of our hard-earned money.

Affordability is a huge issue for millions of Americans, and in this midterm election, we need to choose legislators who will do what we need them to do to reverse this trend. We can’t afford to let Democrats put the cost of an ordinary life even further out of reach. That’s why this election matters, so don’t sit this one out.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and bold policies, America’s economy is back on track.

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