With just over six months to go until the midterm elections, Democrats have made “affordability” their top talking point, hammering Republicans on persistent cost-of-living concerns and rising gas prices. Early polling suggests those attacks are having their intended effect – but the GOP can flip the script by pointing out that Democrats have consistently voted against affordability measures and have made life more unaffordable everywhere they are in power.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt laid the blueprint for what the GOP response to Democrats’ affordability talk should be during a media briefing last week on Tax Day. Thanks to the Working Families Tax Cuts that congressional Republicans passed and President Donald Trump signed into law last year, Americans saw one of the biggest refund seasons ever, with especially large returns for seniors, tipped workers, and those who earned overtime pay.
The statistics on how much this new tax law saved working families are astonishing. The average refund for tax year 2025 is more than $3,400, up more than 10 percent from 2024. More than 53 million filers have claimed one of the new exemptions in Trump’s tax law. More than 34 million families have claimed the enhanced Child Tax Credit.
But as Leavitt astutely pointed out, “What the American people must not forget is that every single Democrat in Congress voted against these tax cuts.”
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