"Inflation and the cost of living were top issues for swing voters," says Parker Sheppard, PhD, research fellow for The Heritage Foundation. "If you look at the cost of living measured by the consumer price index, it's up an average of 22% since January 2021, and to put that in dollar terms, that's about $1,100 a month for the average household, so cost of living is going up and wages are not going up by that same amount."
Sheppard views that as a pay cut for a lot of households because they are not able to buy the same goods and services that they used to buy.
Major drivers of that are housing and auto insurance. What used to be one-fourth or one-third of a
household budget now eats up more of a budget and puts stress on many households.
To try to combat this problem, Trump has suggested policies that increase the supply of goods and services. For example, Trump wants to produce more energy and cut regulations that make it difficult for businesses to operate. Trump also proposed cutting government spending and getting the deficit under control, which would then bring down demand.
How Harris would have done it
"If you look at Vice President Kamala Harris's proposals, she was responding to the increases in the cost of buying a home by saying 'why don't we give $25,000 to first time home buyers so they can afford a down payment?,' which doesn't do anything to make more houses for people to live in, it just gives them an extra $25,000 to bid up the price of houses," says Sheppard. "She wanted to give businesses a tax deduction to cover the cost of the red tape when it just would have been simpler to find ways to get rid of the red tape in the first place."
There were times that Harris wanted to put in price caps, even though economists warned that would lead to shortages.
Today, Sheppard recommends the Trump follow through on his proposals to review and cut regulations, reduce spending, and do something about taxes "so that we can see more economic growth and find ways to reduce the burden of the debt through increasing prosperity for all Americans."
