State and Corporate Power Shape Affordability Fight

A government shutdown cut SNAP benefits to millions, sending families and government workers to food banks, where lines for food boxes stretched around blocks. “We're seeing lots of folks who have never struggled before and never anticipated to be standing in line at a food pantry,” said Claire Neal, CEO of MANNA FoodBank in western North Carolina. The basic cost of living has become a permanent political concern, leaving households to navigate decisions made by governments, employers and corporations.

The collection “26 Ideas for Solving the Affordability Crisis” gathers proposals from POLITICO reporters on tariffs, taxes, housing, food, health care, utilities, tickets and remote work. Its ideas appear without judgment and in no particular order. The political pressure behind them is harder to miss: candidates and officeholders who once avoided affordability now face demands to make it a policy priority.

Who Bears the Cost

Food banks say demand has exceeded what they saw during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although acute need later eased, reliance stayed high. Food banks expanded warehouses and refrigeration, created volunteer and job-training programs, and built nonprofit referral networks. “We're obviously on the defensive,” said Liza Lieberman, an advocate with the Jewish anti-hunger nonprofit MAZON. The previous year's One Big Beautiful Bill cut food aid and subsidized health care while costs rose, even as the law extended a charity-specific deduction for taxpayers and corporations. Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican, said, “There is a gap with what the government can do. Our welfare programs are not going to solve everything. They never will.” Rebeckah Freeman Adcock, Feeding America's top lobbyist, countered that philanthropic groups “can't treat government relations like a 'nice to have.'”

Tariff policy offers another view of who gets relief and how it arrives. President Donald Trump exempted some products after Republican lawmakers and industries pressed him. Road salt and cement received exemptions after Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran pushed to avoid higher construction costs. The administration also exempted imports including bulk whiskey, household paper products and refined lead. An analysis by the center-right American Action Forum found that the share of U.S. imports exempted from Trump's tariffs rose from about 30% under the original “Liberation Day” duties to roughly two-thirds under tariffs imposed in July over forced-labor concerns. Some relief reached farmers: the Agriculture Department said an exemption for Moroccan fertilizer would lower their costs by about 22%.

The proposals also include direct public ownership. Seattle's Elara, a 150-unit apartment complex, went to Seattle Social Housing Developer, a public authority created through ballot initiatives and funded by a 5% tax on employers paying individual workers more than $1 million annually. Rents range from $665 for a low-income tenant in a studio to $3,767 for a two-bedroom apartment at market rates. The authority says residents may take part in governance, and it plans to devote half of its new construction portfolio to family-sized units. Its interim CEO, Tiffani McCoy, said the model aims to keep housing publicly owned and protected from market speculation. She acknowledged that federal support is needed, while favoring local approaches that don't depend on federal allocations.

Reforms, Rules and Their Limits

Elected officials and lawmakers are offering tax credits, deductions and price rules, but many proposals remain pending or narrow in reach. A bill to extend a car-loan deduction to boat loans drew no cosponsors; proposals for a renter tax credit and a refundable IVF tax credit hadn't advanced. Sen. Cory Booker's “Keep Your Pay Act” would partly offset tax cuts with higher taxes on the wealthiest, but the Yale Budget Lab and Wharton Budget Model found overall revenue would still fall. A POLITICO Poll found 43% of Americans blamed Trump more than Biden for the economy, while 28% blamed Biden more than Trump. Republican communications strategist Kevin Madden said, “The window for being able to pass blame is very, very small.”

Ticket buyers face a market where fans have paid thousands of dollars, and some have been scammed and left outside stadiums. Massachusetts state Sen. Dylan Fernandes said some resale listings drove fans into debt or cost the equivalent of half a month's rent. His bill would cap resale prices at 110% of face value, limit fees and surcharges, and ban speculative ticket sales. In Washington, D.C., the council passed a law capping secondary-market prices at 120% of face value and banning ghost ticketing and surveillance pricing. The Ticket Policy Forum, which represents resale platforms including SeatGeek and StubHub, sued to block it. Proposed rules now sit inside the same political and legal machinery that has struggled to check sellers and platforms.

Utility bills bring that hierarchy into public view. Electric and gas utilities requested $18.6 billion in rate increases through the second quarter of the year, according to PowerLines, a consumer advocacy group. Indiana GOP Gov. Mike Braun demoted and later fired a senior Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission official after commissioners approved a $71 million electric-rate increase. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro threatened to withdraw the state from PJM Interconnection and praised PECO after it withdrew a rate case he had called “pure greed.” Regulators set retail rates and oversee utility spending, including infrastructure for the AI boom; commissioners now face pressure from elected officials as well as utilities.

The collection ranges from a chickpea salad costing less than $3 per serving to proposals for remote-work protections and publicly funded homes. Those ideas coexist with rising costs, withdrawn benefits and markets where sellers can shape prices and access. As Seattle's McCoy put it, “What we're lacking is political will.”