Last year, Republicans won control of Washington on the promise of lower costs, greater prosperity and an all-around better quality of life for families.
But today, as students head back to the classroom, most families can’t even afford the basics. In a recent survey by Intuit, 54% of parents said they’re skipping essential purchases, like groceries, just to afford school supplies.
President Donald Trump thinks parents should simply buy their kids fewer pencils.
It’s no wonder why. According to a new analysis from Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation, “a typical assortment of first-day school supplies will cost an average of 7.3 percent more this back-to-school season.”
Pencils alone are nearly 6% more expensive than they were just a year ago.
Lunch boxes are up 8%.
Notebooks? 17%.
Index cards? 42%.
President Donald Trump thinks parents should simply buy their kids fewer pencils. “They can have five,” the president said.
That’s not a solution. But any answer to this cost-of-living crisis requires acknowledging that these price increases are a symptom of a broken economy.
Instead of tackling the high cost of living, Republicans chose to enact an unprecedented wealth transfer from families to the billionaire class.
They slapped tariffs on everything from toys to cars, costing the typical family $2,400. They kicked over 15 million Americans off their health insurance while raising health care costs for everyone. They took food away from 16 million hungry children. They enacted so-called Trump accounts, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”
All together, they gave 90% of Americans a pay cut — and 900 billionaires another round of tax cuts.
These aren’t just bad policies. They’re policies that virtually nobody voted for.
Two in 3 Trump voters oppose tax cuts for people who are already rich. Over 80 percent also oppose cuts to food programs, Medicaid and Social Security.
The only way to save our democracy is to restore people’s faith in it.
Americans deserve better than a country where most families can’t afford the first rung of the American Dream. They deserve better than an economy that punishes hard work and rewards hoarded wealth. They deserve better than a health care industry that prioritizes profit over health and humanity. They deserve an overhaul of our failing political and economic system.
That’s what Democrats are offering: an agenda to transform health care, cut costs and crush corruption. We want to bring the cost of child care down to $15 per day. We want to lower health insurance premiums with a permanent health care tax credit. We want to cut the red tape Republicans have imposed on Medicaid recipients, which keeps deserving families from enrolling. We want to slash the cost of housing by building nearly 2 million affordable homes. We want to protect working families from utility shutoffs and cap home energy costs at 3% of monthly income. We want to guarantee hearing, vision and dental coverage for every senior on Medicare, so that working parents don’t have to pay for their own parents’ health care as well. We want to prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks and ban corporate criminals from holding government jobs, so that neither lawmakers nor federal employees can profit from insider information. And yes — we want to release the Epstein files and bring those who abused young girls to justice. The only way to save our democracy is to restore people’s faith in it. Republicans hoped that voters’ anger would calm down over the summer. They hoped that prices would stop rising all by themselves. They hoped that the American people would move on. They were wrong — and their constituents are letting them hear it. The American people are going to keep speaking out. And as students head back to school, Democrats will keep fighting for a country worthy of our children.
Rep. Katherine Clark
Katherine Clark, the Democratic whip, represents Massachusetts' 5th Congressional District in the House of Representatives. 
