Affordability was a top issue at the polls. Can Democrats deliver results?

It's considered this, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, can Democrats deliver on affordability? It was the party's central pitch to voters in 2026. We ran on affordability, we won on affordability, and now it's our job to govern on affordability. That is the top-house Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, speaking on MS now, in victory speech after victory speech this week, Democrats committed to bringing down prices. We will fight to lower your costs and increase your paychecks. Here's what I'm going to throw down for. We are going to lower costs so that families can afford their lives. We have to work to make healthcare, housing, and groceries more affordable to end this war and stop the pain at the pump. Senators elect Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, and Roy Cooper in North Carolina. Cooper's campaign slogan was just "make stuff costless." Consider this. Even with control of both chambers of Congress making stuff costless, may not be so simple. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's consider this from NPR, voters have been very clear throughout this midterm season. They are fed up with high prices, high prices on gas, on food, healthcare, housing. It's requiring me to make sometimes some difficult choices. Sometimes I have to decide between paying a bill like the power bill or buying groceries. It feels like we're running a marathon and no matter how hard you work, you can't ever get to the finish line. That was Chuck Lockhart, Jennifer Browning, and Alex Garcia, speaking with NPR earlier this year. Democrats rode that frustration to a massive victory this week, but will they actually succeed in lowering costs? I'm so disillusioned that I don't want to make the mistake of being too excited for change, because it's sad when it doesn't happen. To figure out what the new Congress could do. To help bring prices down, we called economist Martha Gimble, she's executive director of the Yale Budget Lab, and served as a senior advisor in the Council of Economic Advisors under the Biden administration. Let me invite you to join me on my time travel ship. We are now in January. It's day one. Democrats control the house. They control the Senate. They have control. They do not have a magic wand. Where might they start? I think the point about a magic wand is really important here, because I do think addressing a lot of these affordability concerns is going to be much harder than many people are hoping. If you think about what causes prices, you can go back to Econ 101, the demand curve and the supply curve, you can affect demand. No one like that, right? I want to demand as much stuff as I demanded a year ago, and so you have to bring up supply, and bringing up supply takes time. It is not the case that you can simply flip a switch tomorrow and have 10% more houses than you had the day before. And so unfortunately for the Democrats, overall, I think it is going to take some time, even in the best of circumstances to address a lot of the underlying issues that are caused. So no matter what they're first to move in the new Congress, it's going to be a little wild. Just to set expectations, it's going to be a little wild for people's wallets, start feeling a little fatter. Yeah, I mean, it does speak to the fact that there is some pressure on Congress to act sooner rather than later, because anything they do manage to get done and get the president to sign is going to take some time to come into effect. And so if they wait until 2028 to do anything, then voters probably won't see the effects of that before they go to the polls again. So circle back to where do they start? Where should they start? So I mean, I think the things that will make the biggest difference in the short run are actually things that have been done via executive action. So the Iran War and the tariffs, the Iran War has played a huge role in driving up costs for American families. And so I think there's going to be a question for the Congress of how quickly they can and want to move on trying to fight the president on those executive authorities and see if they can rein those in. Moving there with things like reigning in some of the foreign policy moves, but the war in Iran, the tariffs, they're still going to have president Trump in the White House. So realistically, what what are your expectations? No, I think people shouldn't be too defeatist here. We had a bipartisan housing bill that passed in this Congress, which was not a Congress with a lot of good feeling between many Democrats and Republicans. There's a bipartisan permitting bill on the table that would make it easier to build energy infrastructure in this country, which would bring down energy prices. And so I think sometimes people get too depressed about the possibility of bipartisan action on the Hill. But actually, even now, there is appetite for that. And so we'll just have to see what they come up with. What about health care? What can Congress do there? Healthcare is a big one. Obamacare premiums are set to spike next year. We also haven't seen the Medicaid cuts from the One Big Beautiful Bill act take effect yet. And so healthcare is probably going to be a huge source of strain for households next year. It's also one where the government does have a role to play, right? It plays a relatively big role in healthcare markets, both through directly providing health insurance and through subsidizing some forms of private insurance. Republicans have taken action to make healthcare more expensive by driving up the Obamacare premiums and taking Medicaid away from people. So we will have to see if that's a place where they want a backtrack. Are you hopeful this Congress will be able to lower the cost of living in the US? Well, I'm an American citizen, so I'm always optimistic, but I'm an economist, so I'm always pessimistic for some combination of those two. You're at war with yourself at all times. Exactly. So bottom line, you know, I am an American. I would love to pay less money for my gas, for my eggs, for my mortgage. Should I be hopeful that that is coming at some point in the not terribly, terribly distant future? I think the thing to really be watching is what the administration's language and posture is on the Iran War, because that is the thing where if something changes, we'll have the most and fastest impact on prices. All right. Martha Gimbal, economist and executive director of the Yale Budget Lab. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This episode was produced by Kai McNamey and Connor Donovan with audio engineering by Tiffany Vera Castro. Our director is Jonas Adams. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Tenbeat Aremius. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Doining. It's considered this from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.