Category: Inflation
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Trump has the chance to end the welfare free-for-all Minnesota exposed
It’s the $1.2 trillion question.
The United States spends roughly $1.2 trillion every year on means-tested welfare programs — cash aid, food assistance, housing subsidies, and medical care. The list runs through a thicket of acronyms: SNAP, TANF, SSI, EITC, ACTC, WIC, CHIP, ACA subsidies, and CCDBG, plus school meals, Medicaid, and Section 8 housing.
States that eliminate fraud can afford to provide better aid to real residents in need — creating a race to the top in administration rather than a race to exploit Washington.
This guaranteed-income architecture now fuels a destructive cycle. Federal spending drives debt. Debt fuels inflation. Inflation expands dependence. And Washington responds by printing more money and sending it back to the states — without demanding serious accountability.
The result is a bottomless pit of spending, fraud, and inflation, with states handed endless federal funds and almost no incentive to police abuse.
Minnesota’s massive Somali-linked fraud scandal exposes this system in its most grotesque form. The question is whether President Trump will use it to force states to reclaim ownership — and responsibility — over welfare.
The day-care, nutrition, and medical fraud uncovered in Minneapolis is not an aberration. It is the predictable outcome of an open-ended entitlement state. Fraud networks thrive wherever federal money flows without limits or consequences. While the Minneapolis cases involved tight-knit ethnic networks, the underlying problem is national and structural. As long as states do not have to pay their own way, fraud will remain rational behavior.
California offers a parallel example. A report last summer found that roughly one-third of all community college applications in the state were fake — submitted solely to extract federal financial aid. That scam could not survive if California had to pick up the tab.
It isn’t just a blue-state problem, either. As Alex Berenson has reported, Indiana’s Medicaid spending on “autism behavioral therapy” exploded thirtyfold in just six years, reaching $75,000 per child for a few hours a week of unproven playtime therapy. When federal dollars cover the bill, discipline evaporates.
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Many Americans ask how Minnesota allowed the Feeding Our Future scandal to persist for years. The answer is simple: Washington supplied unlimited money, and the state faced no budgetary consequence for ignoring warning signs.
Over 200 day-care and medical providers allegedly siphoned billions across Medicaid, child care, and nutrition programs. That scale of fraud does not occur without political indifference — or worse.
States have every incentive under this system to look away. Federal money enables a closed loop of special interests, dependency, and electoral protection. Oversight threatens the flow.
Devolving welfare programs to the states — using fixed block grants rather than open-ended federal matches — would cut this dynamic off at the knees. States must balance their budgets. They do not have a printing press. When fraud costs real money, enforcement follows.
This is the moment for Trump to make that case. Either states raise taxes to fund welfare programs themselves, or they reform and prioritize them. That choice restores democratic accountability.
Consider the contrast. The United States spends roughly $1 trillion on national defense — protecting everyone. Yet we now spend even more on means-tested welfare that serves narrower populations while distorting the economy for all. Open-ended welfare spending drives inflation, which then forces more people onto welfare. End the money-printing, and fewer people will need subsidies in the first place.
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In response to the Minnesota scandal, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget froze $10 billion in funding for TANF and the Child Care Development Fund across several states. That is a start. But temporary freezes will not survive the next Democrat administration.
The durable fix is statutory restructuring — through budget reconciliation — to force states to assume full financial responsibility for welfare programs. Without unlimited federal backstopping, abuse becomes politically and fiscally intolerable.
Critics warn that block grants spark a “race to the bottom.” The 1996 welfare reform suggests the opposite. When states gained ownership, many innovated — emphasizing work, child-care support, and fraud reduction. Accountability improved because incentives changed.
Yes, benefits should be limited to the truly needy. Open-ended entitlements allowed 250 “meal sites” to appear almost overnight in Minnesota, claiming to feed 120,000 children a day.
Force states to balance their books, and they will treat taxpayer money with respect. States that eliminate fraud can afford to provide better aid to real residents in need — creating a race to the top in administration rather than a race to exploit Washington.
The real way to “feed our future” is to end inflationary money-printing and dismantle the infinite entitlement state — so families can afford food on their own again.
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If voters don’t feel relief, the economy isn’t fixed
The concerns of many Americans about their economic well-being may be at the highest level since the Great Depression. Politico recently reported that 46% of Americans say their cost of living is the worst that they can remember, including over one-third of Trump voters. Nothing better exemplifies this than the many “30-somethings” who are unable to purchase a home.
Financial anxieties center around affordability, which is the proxy for evaluating whether the economy is meeting the public’s needs. Affordability is the degree to which households can responsibly pay for essential goods and services.
In the end, the nation’s affordability dilemma is about the confidence people have in the country’s economic future.
Gregg Ip, an economic commentator for the Wall Street Journal, says that affordability cannot be measured solely by economic data, but must also account for perceptions of financial security.
President Trump opined that concerns about affordability are a “hoax” created by Democrats for political purposes. Most Americans would disagree. While the runaway inflation of the Biden presidency has moderated, widespread concerns about affordability persist. According to a recent Politico poll, nearly half of the nation found the cost of their groceries, health care, utilities, and housing to be unaffordable. About half of the respondents said food costs are difficult to manage, and more than a quarter skipped medical appointments because of the cost.
In the 2026 midterm elections, it will be incumbent upon Republicans and Democrats to make an affordability agenda “job one.” These agendas should be the yardstick voters use to cast their vote for members of Congress and state officials.
The U.S. affordability crisis is multidimensional, requiring a dual-track strategy that combines structural reforms with immediate and affordable relief for the most vulnerable citizens. Each party’s affordability agenda should demonstrate when households will realize cost-of-living relief, avoid another round of inflation, provide market incentives for innovation, supply expansion and productivity gains, demonstrate distributional fairness, and stress choice over federal mandates.
Restoring an affordable economy will require that failed federal policies be reversed and the president and Congress focus on fixing long-term root causes.
To make goods and services more affordable, public policies should aim at increasing private-sector housing construction, modernizing domestic energy regulations, expanding production, encouraging competition in the health care insurance market, avoiding deficit spending that can rekindle inflation, rolling back regulations that increase consumer and business expenses, and devolving social and educational programs to the states to tailor taxpayer-friendly solutions to local challenges.
The nation’s affordability dilemma is not only about the price of goods and services. It concerns the relationship between costs, income, and the perception of financial security. In the end, it is about the confidence people have in the country’s economic future.
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Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images
When households and businesses feel “squeezed,” they lose faith that public or private institutions are protecting their interests. A September 2025 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that just 17% of Americans trusted the federal government to do the “right thing” most of the time. Similarly, the July 2025 Gallup survey reported that less than 30% of Americans had confidence in U.S. institutions.
The major impediments to addressing the high cost of living are deep ideological divides over causes and solutions. Progressives emphasize government mandates and regulations, subsidies, and deficit spending. Conservatives stress fiscal restraint and market-driven solutions. Adopting common-sense economic reforms requires compromise and the rejection of left and right extremism driven by grievances and rage.
There is no more important issue for voters than which candidates and parties will boldly tackle the affordability challenge. Success will be influenced by policies that encourage business investment and innovation and workers keeping more of their income.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
The party that made life more expensive wants credit for noticing
Having identified a problem they created, Democrats are now blaming “affordability” on Republicans. It is a striking display of audacity — the very definition of chutzpah.
For more than a year, Democrats have struggled to find a message that resonates because they keep recycling losing ones. They have lashed out at immigration enforcement —storming ICE facilities, attacking ICE officers, and defending violent illegal aliens.
Democrats are now left with a single strategy: campaigning on the consequences of their own incompetence and hoping voters forget who caused them.
They voted for the largest tax increase in U.S. history by opposing the extension of the 2017 tax rates under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
They continue to cling to climate alarmism even as the rest of the world moves on.
They remain soft on crime, opposing President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in cities where criminals run rampant and law-abiding citizens live in fear.
And in a final act of desperation, they triggered the longest federal government shutdown in history — before caving and achieving nothing.
Same issues. Same failure to connect.
The results speak for themselves. Democrats’ favorability sits at an abysmal 32.5%, well below Republicans’ 38.2% and far below President Trump’s 43.8%.
Then came Zohran Mamdani, the neophyte New York Democratic Socialist who toppled Democrats’ old guard in consecutive elections — first Mayor Eric Adams, then former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani did what Democrats have always done: promise voters lots of free stuff. Only he did it on a far grander scale — buses, housing, child care, grocery stores.
Faced with his success, Democrats opted for the familiar response: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. They sanitized Mamdani’s socialism, rebranded it as “affordability,” and declared it their new cause.
That affordability is now Democrats’ issue should surprise no one. After all, they caused the crisis they now loudly lament.
Start with New York City, where affordability has collapsed most dramatically. According to Visual Capitalist’s ranking of America’s least affordable cities, Manhattan is No. 1, Brooklyn ranks sixth, and Queens seventh. In fact, the top 10 least affordable cities are overwhelmingly governed by Democrats and located in Democrat-dominated states: New York, Hawaii, California, and Massachusetts. By contrast, nine of the 10 most affordable cities are in Republican-dominated states.
The reasons are no mystery. They are the left’s preferred policies: high taxes that drive up the cost of living and chase out taxpayers; rent control that discourages new construction and fuels homelessness; and excessive regulation and litigation that inflate the cost of everything they touch.
The same pattern holds at the state level. U.S. News and World Report lists the 10 least affordable states, and the top six are California, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Washington, and New York. Nine of the 10 are blue states. Florida — the lone red-state exception — also boasts the No. 1 economy, ranks second in education, levies no state income tax, and continues to attract new residents in large numbers. Meanwhile, all 10 of the most affordable states are Republican-led.
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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
What about inflation? Isn’t that a national problem?
Yes, but inflation didn’t materialize out of thin air. It began under the Biden administration, reaching a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022. CPI-U inflation was just 1.4% when Biden took office in January 2021. By March, it had nearly doubled. By June, it had surged to 5.4%. By December, it hit 7%. A year later, it still stood at 6.5%. Inflation did not fall below 3% until July 2024 — the 43rd month of Biden’s presidency.
Excessive Democrat spending fueled this surge. From fiscal years 2021 through 2024, the Congressional Budget Office shows cumulative deficits of $8.9 trillion, driven by roughly $8 trillion in spending above the pre-pandemic baseline. The only reason Democrats didn’t spend more is that members of their own party balked.
Inflation works like weight gain: it comes on fast and comes off slowly. Even when the rate of inflation declines, prices remain higher. There is no economic Ozempic. Americans are still paying the price for four years of Democratic fiscal gluttony.
None of this has stopped Democrats from claiming “affordability” as their issue — or from demanding more of the same policies that caused the crisis in the first place: higher spending, higher taxes, and more regulation.
Stripped of winning ideas, Democrats are now left with a single strategy: campaigning on the consequences of their own incompetence and hoping voters forget who caused them.
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