Issues

COSTS & AFFORDABILITY OVERVIEW: Both directly and indirectly. Trump and the Republican Congress haven't tamed inflation or contained costs. They've increased the deficit by $4 Trillion (yes, Trillion). While giving redistributing wealth to the richest, they've cut ACA Obamacare subsidies, doubling some monthly costs and forcing families to give up health insurance. They've cut Medicaid and SNAP. They've increased household energy costs by sweetheart deals with AI companies to push up others' prices, by gutting lower cost clean energy programs and their lower costs in favor of expensive fossil fuels. They seem oblivious to housing the food costs as well. The Trump tariffs have been projected to cost every American $2,000 per year. They're made with no plan and change for no reason, so this is an estimate. They won't lower costs, bring back US manufacturing, or help US exporters.

Here's how Congress can help lower costs in 2027, and increase incomes, the flip side of costs. Higher incomes are rising faster than inflation, and lower incomes are barely keeping up.

The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 ($15,000/year), a poverty wage. Congress should increase this to $15/hour (Chicago's is $16.60)

Congress should fix the CFTB in January 2027 by clearly authorizing funding and roles. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) stops fraud and predatory pricing against consumers. The White House is trying to close it and has largely succeeded. It's fully funded by the Fed, so the President has no authority to do so.

HEALTH CARE: Everyone should be able to get the health care they need at a price they can afford. 60,000 people are uninsured in the 7th CD (8%). That's unacceptable. Most of the uninsured are between 18-64, not covered by CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) or Medicare. Blacks and Hispanics are over-represented in these numbers up to 12-19% uninsured.

There are many moving parts to health care, and the politics in Congress are also hard to predict.

The best legislative options will probably include several elements, and I'll start from the best way to the least best way to get to universal coverage. While the House has passed a 3-year extension of ACA subsidies, the Senate has not.

1) Extend ACA subsidies; the Senate must pass the House bill or something similar.

2) Change to continuous eligibility for ACA subsidies, Medicaid, and CHIP. Auto-enroll those eligible. In 2027, the House may be able to do this.

3) Expand ACA subsidies to those below the poverty level who don't qualify now. Allow IRS to share income data

4) Create a public option within ACA to compete with private plans. Public-private competition could lower costs by up to 20%. It could draw buyers from private ACA plans, which are rising sharply. This could be especially needed by small businesses.

HOUSING: The problem is not enough homes. Here's what Congress could do in 2026 to increase the supply of housing and leverage more home-building by helping locally controlled building and funding.

Housing supply is complex. Our IL-7 district needs 10 to 15,000 new homes to reach market equilibrium and slow or steady price increases, and more than $25,000 very low-income units priced to make them affordable at 30% of the owner or renter's income. Chicago needs 119,00 new affordable homes, and US as a whole needs more than 7 million new affordable homes.

Some Congressional levers such as land use are locally controlled. But congress can act mainly through tax incentives and regulatory reform.

1) LIHTC: The low-income housing tax credit spurs rental housing building, up to 3 million nationally so far.

2) Housing Choice Vouchers (Sec. 8) help low-income renters stay off the street and out of Emergency Rooms, and better able to care for their own health (plenty of "Housing is Health" evidence).

3) Innovative projects such as the Green Social Housing Ordinance (May 2025), which aims for 1,200 affordable homes each year through a $135 million bond and revolving local fund. The project will break ground on the west side this year in IL-7. Another example is the Chicago 1901 project (9500 total homes, 1000-2000 low-income). These are not enough, but they're a start.

4) The YIMBY Act (Yes in my neighborhood). This bipartisan approach is a promising first start. It's intended to push local governments to fix discriminatory zoning to build more senior, worker, low-income, and affordable housing. If not passed by 2027, the House should do so.

5) More innovative nontraditional homes: Chicago now allows ADUs (accessory dwelling units), coach houses, and tiny houses. Oak Park has led in this area. The bipartisan Road to Housing Act of 2025 and other proposals allow ADU-type homes to be financed through FHA loans, Fannie and Freddie purchasing of these loans, and standard federal building code for modular homes that would build trust for banks and others in the market. Some bills speed NEPA permitting and reduce administrative costs of 10-20% to speed building.

FOOD: Food prices are rising. How Congress could help control them:

The obvious self-inflicted wound in food prices is tariffs. Another actionable reason is grocery consolidation, which Congress could help fix with anti-trust actions anathema to the White House. Congress could likely reduce future severe weather impacts with climate action and poultry disease outbreaks with other regulations.

1) Anti-Trust Enforcement: Some of food price increases are due to grocery consolidation. Congress should address these through specific anti-trust enforcement and legislation, mandates, targeted funding, and confirmation demands.

2) Congress should restore previous tariff levels. That's Congress' JOB under the Constitution. The reasoning for them and their rollout was nonsensical, unplanned, and harmful to consumers, US trade overall, and US reliability as a trade partner around the world. They are increasing food cost, very sharply for some products. When consumers complain Trump exempts them. They are also raising costs for fertilizer, for example. These inflationary effects have not hit prices yet. OBBB cut $186 billion from SNAP benefits, reducing demand as families go hungry or pay much more for food. This is bad policy for lower-income Americans, for farmers, and for the economy as a whole.

3) Reverse subsidies while removing tariffs (see below). Most farmers don't want subsidies. They want to sell their crops on the market, to China, and to the world. The OBBB Act subsidizes farmer at $60 billion for commodity crops. Some of this pays farmers to not grow crops, raising prices. Some is intended to restore lost revenue from soy and other markets lost to the Chinese due to tariffs and to US loans to subsidize Argentinian farmers.

ENERGY PRICES: Trump and the Climate Hoax party are intentionally raising consumer electricity prices. SEE CLIMATE BELOW

Dave will be a leader in Congress on Climate Policy, Energy Policy, and Protecting the Environment. Dave teaches a graduate climate policy course he designed at the #1 public affairs and #1 environmental policy university in the US (of 267). The Trump war on renewable energy despite growing energy demand is the dumbest energy policy in US history. It makes absolutely no sense and gives up any US economic leadership in renewables and EVs, ceding these markets to Chinese companies for decades into the future. There are hundreds of effective policies that the federal government can and should incentivize, including both a carbon tax and cap and trade system.