Republicans want to put the economy at the center of their midterm message as they seek to protect their majorities in Congress. But as cost-of-living concerns mount across the political spectrum, the GOP is struggling to act decisively to address them.
Already top Republicans acknowledge they haven’t done enough to sell the “one big, beautiful bill,” the party-line centerpiece of their economic agenda they enacted over the summer. Now internal divisions and the need for bipartisan support in the Senate are threatening any attempt to follow up on it.
The GOP is struggling to coalesce behind a health care plan that would prevent Obamacare premium hikes set to kick in next month and efforts to rein in President Donald Trump’s tariffs have run aground in the House. Meanwhile, the administration’s proposal to distribute $2,000 rebate checks has gotten a lukewarm response on Capitol Hill and the fate of other smaller bills to address things like housing prices and student debt have sparked intraparty sparring.
“The cost of living is a legitimate issue — I think it was one of the main reasons President Trump was elected. I think it’s still an issue,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said in an interview, urging Republicans to pursue another party-line bill before the midterms in response.
While many in the GOP — including Trump — continue to lay blame for their economic problems with former President Joe Biden, there are clear warning signs for Republicans. Forty-six percent of respondents in a recent POLITICO Poll said the cost of living is the worst they can remember it being.
That includes 37 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2024, and about a quarter of Trump voters say he is either fully or mainly responsible for the current state of the economy.
Yet top GOP leaders in Congress are keeping expectations low for major new economic legislation. Instead, they are betting on having an easier time addressing affordability questions next month, when new programs enacted as part of the megabill start impacting voters — like no taxes on some tips and overtime income.
“We haven’t probably messaged as effectively as we should,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview, when asked about the party’s economic case. “I think we’ll have lots of opportunities now that we’re getting into an election year to talk about the things we’ve done and how they are going to lead to things being more affordable for the American people, probably starting with tax relief next year.”
Speaker Mike Johnson also argued voters have not fully felt the impact of the megabill “because it takes a while for it to be implemented.” But he predicted that by mid-2026, “there’s going to be boats rising in the economy, this is going to be a very different situation before we go into the election cycle.”
“Republicans are dialed in like a laser, with laser focus on the cost of living and affordability,” he added, while forecasting more to come: “They are going to see this agenda going forward — our affordability agenda.”
But there are reasons to doubt an impending turnaround. Some of these same leaders argued this summer, as they strained to pass the megabill, that Americans would feel the economic benefits in a big way by late fall. That never materialized, with Republicans instead bogged down in a monthslong fight over releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein and a lengthy government shutdown. Trump himself has recently taken to calling the emphasis on affordability a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.
Democrats are gearing up to hammer the GOP on the issue, and some of them are hearing some familiar echoes in the promises of a rapid turnaround just around the corner. Democrats said much the same thing after their party passed their own major party-line bills as inflation rose under Biden.
“They are in a bubble from Donald Trump on down,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters last week. “Donald Trump says there’s no affordability crisis — what kind of world is he living in?”
Kennedy isn’t the only one talking up the idea of doing a second party-line bill using the budget reconciliation process to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. The Republican Study Committee, a large bloc of House conservatives, is pushing such a bill aimed at addressing affordability and other issues, and Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is vowing to plow forward in laying the groundwork for another reconciliation measure.
But Johnson and Thune have treaded lightly on the prospects for second such bill, which faces uphill odds with the GOP divided on the policy particulars and the midterms drawing closer by the day. Instead attention is being drawn to smaller-bore efforts.
Tony Fabrizio, a top Trump pollster, also urged members of the RSC last week to tackle high prices for prescription drugs and housing — warning members in a closed-door meeting that affordability concerns were a key reason a House special election in Tennessee was so close.
But even a push to attach a bipartisan housing package to the annual defense policy bill sparked an intraparty turf war, pitting Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the panel’s ranking member, against House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.).
Scott said in an interview last week the housing measure is “a great sign that we are looking for ways to address the challenges that we see in real America” and that passing it now would “put lawmakers “on the same page as President Trump and the White House.”
But Hill, who plans to advance a separate housing package through his committee later this month, told senators that parts of the Senate bill are unacceptable to most House Republicans and need to be left out of the Pentagon bill.
Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), who is spearheading the House package, said last week he would be “amenable to something that has provisions the House wants and the Senate wants.” Thune, asked if the Senate housing provision would get in the defense bill, crossed his fingers.
But no agreement could be reached over the weekend, and the House released defense bill text Sunday night that did not include the housing provisions.
Other lawmakers are itching to show that the party is addressing other affordability concerns, even if those efforts face an uncertain path to becoming law.
House GOP leaders, for instance, are trying to move long-delayed permitting reform legislation over the floor in the coming weeks, arguing that reducing red tape for energy and other projects would lower the cost of living. And Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told reporters Thursday there could soon be a bipartisan effort to force a bill capping student loan interest at 2 percent to the House floor.
“That’s a hint for next week,” she said, when asked if she or a colleague would pursue a discharge petition aimed at sidestepping House GOP leaders who have opposed other forms of student loan relief.
House and Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are having a furious behind-the-scenes debate about how to show they are trying to address health care costs ahead of the end-of-year expiration of Obamacare subsidies used by more than 20 million Americans.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) acknowledged “there’s a lot more to do” on affordability beyond this year’s megabill on health care and more: “Obviously, medical inflation is very high.”
But GOP leaders in both chambers are scrambling to figure out what pieces of a health care overhaul to put forward — and getting an earful from competing factions within their own party. It’s possible Senate Republicans this week won’t put a consensus GOP alternative up for a vote alongside the three-year extension Democrats want.
A plethora of rank-and-file options are under development, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) backing a two-year extension of the subsidies with new eligibility restrictions, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wanting to provide more flexibility for health savings accounts and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) proposing to make it easier to deduct medical expenses on their income taxes.
“It’s a disaster,” Hawley said. “Health care, as it currently is, is too expensive for everybody.”
Katherine Hapgood and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
