First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
The White House has put a staggering number on the Democrats' 2026 midterm agenda: $49 trillion over ten years. That is the verdict of President Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, which released a report titled "The Real Cost of Socialism in America" scoring the Democratic Socialists of America's "Workers Deserve More" platform — the program now driving Democratic primaries across the country.
The headline figure breaks down to roughly $355,000 for every American household. And paying for it, the report says, would mean pushing the effective federal individual income-tax rate from about 14 percent all the way to nearly 40 percent — the 40 percent tax hike now setting the debate on fire.
Almost the entire bill comes from one item: Medicare for All, which the council priced at $47.41 trillion over the decade. The rest of the tab includes canceling all student debt and free college tuition ($3.6 trillion), a mandated 32-hour workweek ($918 billion), Green New Deal policies ($370 billion), open borders and amnesty ($530 billion), and national rent control. A proposed wealth tax on billionaires would bring in about $3.94 trillion — barely a dent.
The White House did not stop at the budget math. If the $49 trillion were borrowed instead of taxed, the report warns, the 10-year Treasury yield would blow past 10 percent, 30-year mortgage rates would top 12 percent, and prices would more than double over the decade. Funded through taxes instead, it projects paychecks shrinking by nearly 30 percent and $22,000 a year in lost take-home pay for the average worker.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah says the stakes could not be higher. A Democratic takeover of Congress in November, he warns, would move this agenda from the fringe to the floor — with the middle class and the working poor paying the heaviest price. "America Will Never Be A Socialist Nation," the White House declared alongside the report.
Supporters of the platform call the estimate a partisan scare tactic and dispute how the costs are framed. But with affordability already the top issue for voters, the $49 trillion figure has turned the midterms into a straight fight between two economic visions — and both sides know it.