The day after Democrats dominated the 2025 elections, largely by focusing on affordability and Republican failures to address the cost of living, Donald Trump declared that he sees the issue as “dead.” On Thursday, the president went further, adding, “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.”
For good measure, at a White House event on Friday, the Republican went so far as to condemn the very idea of “affordability” as a potent political issue, dismissing it as “a con job by the Democrats.”
In each instance, Trump’s underlying point was the same: There’s no point in thinking about the issue anymore, he argued, because he’s already succeeded in “substantially” reducing consumer costs, pushing Americans’ cost of living “way down.”
The obvious problem with these claims is that they’re demonstrably wrong. Despite Trump’s assurances (and campaign promises), everything from energy costs to grocery prices has gone up over the last year.
The less obvious problem is that the White House is taking deliberate steps to make matters worse. The Associated Press reported:
IRS Direct File, the electronic system for filing tax returns for free, will not be offered next year, the Trump administration has confirmed. An email sent Monday from IRS official Cynthia Noe to state comptrollers that participate in the Direct File program said that ‘IRS Direct File will not be available in Filing Season 2026. No launch date has been set for the future.’
As the AP’s report noted, the average American typically spends roughly $140 preparing returns each year. That total is unrelated to what taxpayers might owe: The $140 refers only to the annual cost of preparing and filing the paperwork.
The Biden administration and congressional Democrats who approved the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 came up with an alternative solution that was implemented last year: IRS Direct File was an online system that made it easier for Americans to file their tax returns at no cost.
Those who participated in the system liked it quite a bit, and there’s no great mystery as to why: People like free things, especially when it comes to dealing with government bureaucracies they’d rather avoid anyway. The result was a program that demonstrated that the federal government can function more efficiently and make Americans’ lives a little easier. Lobbyists for the commercial tax preparation industry, predictably, asked the Trump administration to reverse course. It did, quickly ending Direct File after a successful one-year experiment. “This is another corrupt decision by the Trump Administration to help corporate donors while raising costs and making life more difficult for the American people,” Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said in a written statement. “Whether it’s raising price-hiking tariffs, cancelling infrastructure projects, driving up electricity prices, blocking attempts to lower the cost of health care, going to court to prevent hungry people from getting SNAP, or eliminating a no-cost method to file taxes, President Trump is going all out to make life less affordable for American families.” And therein lies the point. It’s not easy for any president, even a competent one, to snap his or her fingers and magically reduce the cost of living, but White House teams can at least try to make a positive difference. The demise of IRS Direct File offers timely evidence that this Republican administration doesn’t want to bother.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
