Democrats are desperate to make the 2026 midterm elections about affordability, buoyed by their November victories, enthusiasm for their so-called Abundance Agenda, and polling showing President Donald Trump losing support on the economy. [emphasis, links added]
Prices remain stubbornly high, driven by long-term supply chain issues, elevated inflation, and economic factors beyond President Trump’s control.
But the policies championed by the Democrats would make the problem significantly worse.
The Democratic Party has long supported direct government intervention in the economy to lower prices. For example, even before being energized by socialist darling Zohran Mamdani, polling revealed that a shocking 80% of Democrats support price controls.
Price controls not only demand increased, costly government bureaucracy for enforcement, but also don’t solve the root cause of the problem.
As researchers have shown, price controls lead to rationing and corruption, as people and organizations lobby government authorities for preferential treatment, while also failing to suppress inflation, which returns as soon as the price controls are loosened.
In other words, the politically connected will receive the benefits while the rest of American households will suffer.
Similarly, other forms of heavy-handed government intervention, such as subsidies and regulations, impose costs on taxpayers and consumers.
Subsidies can lower prices in targeted industries, but when financed by deficits, they may add to inflation if they expand the money supply.
Perhaps even more damaging, almost every policy proposed by Democratic Party leaders demands increasing the regulatory burden that is already holding back our economy.
Whether it’s reimposing the Biden-era’s restrictive fuel efficiency standards, hyper-regulating industry over environmental impact concerns, or bringing back corporate climate or DEI disclosures, the only abundance the Democratic Party wants to produce is of red tape.
It seems the classic Ronald Reagan quote about how the Democrat Party views government still applies: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Nowhere is this impulse to regulate more damaging than in the energy sector.
“What I love about the Democrats is that, you always know when they start talking about affordability, they’re going to charge you twice as much, and spend three times as much.” —Kelsey Grammer
More of Hollywood is speaking up.
pic.twitter.com/dUlBgrf35o— Heatherheather007 (@LibertyValkyrie) December 8, 2025
In Virginia, the state’s Clean Economy Act, which mandates a slew of green programs, is estimated to cost residential consumers nearly $300 a year.
On the other hand, from 2011 to 2024, Ohio families saved over $37 billion, or roughly $261 per household per year, thanks to energy deregulation that led to greater choice.
Time and again, blue states with the most regulations, like California, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, have the highest electricity rates. In contrast, red states with fewer regulatory barriers, like Oklahoma, Texas, and Nebraska, have the lowest rates.
In fact, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) unsurprisingly found that low-regulation states that proactively increased energy supply by embracing both traditional and renewable sources had lower-than-average electricity prices.
But this is about more than consumer utility bills.
The CEO of the energy infrastructure company Williams recently said it cost twice as much to secure permits for a pipeline as it did to build the pipeline—and Williams is not unique.
Permitting delays add billions of dollars to energy projects in America, with one recent transmission line project in the Pacific Northwest alone facing roughly $300 million in increased costs, in large part due to permitting red tape.
Such costs are not isolated.
As Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recently said, “Energy is not a sector of the economy, it is the sector that enables every other sector.”
America can’t manufacture vehicles, transport food, heat homes, or even turn on a smartphone without energy. So when regulations raise the cost of energy infrastructure, generation, and distribution, those costs are added to everything else we buy, pushing inflation higher.
That’s the danger of the Democratic agenda. For all their talk about abundance, their pro-regulation policies are actually an agenda of scarcity that will raise the cost of living for every American.
For instance, only two Democrats voted for the SPEED Act in the House Natural Resources Committee last week. The bill would implement efficient permitting for all energy sources while maintaining strong environmental safeguards.
While it is encouraging to hear Democrats talk the talk on permitting, their voting record has thus far proven to be unserious about addressing the problem.
To really bring prices down, the Trump administration needs to stand true to free market principles: continue to deregulate, increase production of American energy, and allow all forms of energy—from nuclear and natural gas to solar and wind—to compete to bring the cleanest and most cost-effective options to the market in the fastest time.
The American people are justifiably frustrated with high prices. But they should know that no matter what the Democrats say, we can’t spend and regulate our way out of inflation.
Read more at RealClearEnergy
