{"id":420339,"date":"2026-01-21T07:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T07:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/420339\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T07:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T07:11:08","slug":"affordability-has-become-a-dominant-political-issue-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/420339\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordability has become a dominant political issue in the US"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                     <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/e6f573a_upload-1-hojyidghjsvn-063-2251061555.jpg\" alt=\"US President Donald Trump at a meeting on the cost of living at the Mount Airy Casino Resort, in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, on December 9, 2025.\"   width=\"664\" height=\"443\"\/>    US President Donald Trump at a meeting on the cost of living at the Mount Airy Casino Resort, in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, on December 9, 2025.  ALEX WONG\/GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP                 <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph  \">Even Donald Trump eventually had to admit it. The soaring cost of living has become a central political issue in the United States. After calling it a &#8220;Democrat scam&#8221; for months, the US president reclaimed the term &#8220;affordability&#8221; in early January. The word has flourished in public debate since the summer of 2025, notably thanks to the efforts of New York&#8217;s new Democratic Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. The term has even appeared on the White House&#8217;s website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph  \">On paper, real average wages (adjusted for inflation) in the US increased by 1.1% in 2025, pushing up purchasing power. Yet many Americans feel crushed by extremely high prices, especially for day-to-day expenses such as housing, healthcare or energy. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/en\/economy\/article\/2026\/01\/14\/us-prices-remain-high-despite-trump-s-claims-of-stable-inflation_6749394_19.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The pressure has not eased since the inflation spike that followed the pandemic<\/a>, and voters blame government inaction. The same issue that cost the Democrats the presidential election in 2024 now threatens to drag down the Republicans in the November midterms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph  \">Trump has therefore made a flurry of announcements aimed at reducing the cost of living for Americans. Among his proposals are new healthcare legislation to make insurers pay more, a ban on large real estate groups buying additional single-family homes, a pledge for the federal government to purchase $200 billion in mortgages to lower rates, the introduction of a 10% cap on interest rates for credit cards \u2013 hugely popular in the US \u2013 and a promise of a $2,000 check for low-income households, funded by tariffs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"reading-mode-only \">You have 76.41% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump at a meeting on the cost of living at the Mount Airy Casino Resort,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-420339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}