🚨 WSJ to Democrats: "You Have to Be Kidding" — Your Record Is the Expensive One
The Wall Street Journal editorial board just looked at the Democrats' affordability pitch and said, you have to be kidding. Prices rose about 5% a year under Biden. Trump's first term was 1.9%. This term is 2.9%. The Journal's line is simple: you can vote to send Trump a message — just don't expect life to get cheaper.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board did the math, and Democrats won't like the answer.
In a September 29 editorial titled "The 'Affordability' Democrats? You Have to Be Kidding," the board takes aim at the party's newest campaign pitch: that they are the party of affordability. Their point is simple — Democrats are running on affordability while their own record is the expensive one.
The numbers, as the board lays them out: consumer prices rose about 5% a year under Biden, against 1.9% in Trump's first term and 2.9% so far in the second. Housing rose faster too — 5.3% a year under Biden, versus 2.7% in the first Trump term and 3.7% in the second.
The board traces the inflation spike to a source it has long identified: the March 2021 $1.9 trillion spending bill, which it says poured fuel on prices. That bill was sold as relief. Americans paid for it at the checkout.
And what are Democrats offering now? According to the Journal, more of the same: more spending, more green-energy subsidies, more health-care regulation, and a higher federal minimum wage. The board's argument is that every one of those pushes costs upward — paid by taxpayers, consumers, or both.
The closing line lands the way Journal editorials do — dry and unsparing: Americans may vote for Democrats to send a message to Trump, but expecting daily life to get more affordable under those policies is "indulging hope over expensive experience."
It's a timely hit. Affordability is shaping up as the central battleground of the midterms, and Democrats have been eager to make the election a referendum on prices under Trump. The Journal's response is that voters should look at the receipt — the last time Democrats held the pen, prices ran at 5% a year, and the policies they're promising now are the same ones the board says made things expensive in the first place.
The Trump administration, for its part, has been arguing that its second-term numbers — 2.9% inflation against Biden's 5% — tell the story of restraint versus excess. The Journal's editorial hands that argument its sharpest form yet.
You can vote to send Trump a message. Just don't expect life to get cheaper.