Last year’s major tax law created a new tool for working families: Trump Accounts. Enacted as part of the Working Families Tax Cut passed by President Trump and the Republican Congress in July 2025, the policy is designed to do something Washington rarely does. It uses economic growth to build long-term wealth for every American child. The concept is straightforward. A modest, one-time deposit is made into an investment account at birth. That money is then allowed to grow, un

Capping credit card interest rates at 10% would not just change what borrowers pay. It would wipe out the rewards programs millions of Americans use every day. Points, cash back, airline miles, airport lounges, and statement credits all depend on today’s credit card pricing model. Take that away, and the perks disappear with it. That is not a theory. It is basic credit card economics. Rewards Are Paid for by Interest Margins Credit card rewards are not free. They are funded b

A new proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10% would not make credit cheaper. It would make credit disappear. According to a new study , nearly 90% of Americans would lose access to credit cards entirely  if Washington imposes a one-size-fits-all rate cap. That is not consumer protection. It is a credit shutdown. A new analysis from the Electronic Payments Coalition  finds that 175 to 190 million Americans  would effectively lose their credit cards under a 10% annual

Initial Obamacare  enrollment for 2026 is roughly flat. That happened even as gross premiums jumped about 26 percent and COVID-era subsidy bonuses expired. This outcome is not a mystery. It reflects how deeply subsidized Obamacare already is and how enrollment rules hide real market signals. A new analysis from the Paragon Institute explains why Affordable Care Act enrollment barely moved despite higher prices and the end of temporary COVID add-ons. The reason is simple. The

Middle-class families do not need lectures about inflation being “manageable.” They see the problem every month when they pay their bills. Cost-of-living pressure is real, persistent, and concentrated in the expenses households cannot avoid. Since November 2019, prices for basic necessities have surged far faster than overall inflation. Motor vehicle insurance costs have jumped 56.1 percent, the largest increase of any major consumer category. Utility gas service and motor ve

The U.S. housing market just hit an important turning point that makes it easier for homeowners to sell and should increase housing supply over time. For the first time since the pandemic, there are now more homeowners with mortgage rates above 6% than homeowners holding sub-3% Covid mortgages . As of the end of 2025, 21.2% of existing mortgage holders are paying rates of 6% or higher. That is the highest share since 2015, and it now exceeds the share of ultra-low Covid-era l

Student loan forgiveness is once again treated as taxable income . That is the correct policy. It restores a basic rule of the tax code and closes a loophole that would otherwise invite abuse. As reported by CNBC , the temporary exemption that allowed student loan forgiveness to escape taxation has expired. Going forward, borrowers whose loans are forgiven will owe taxes on that forgiven balance, just as they would with any other form of income. This outcome is not punitive.

Tariffs hurt U.S. manufacturing because imports are a critical input into American production. That basic fact is often ignored in trade debates, and it leads to policies that damage the very industries they claim to protect. Roughly half of all U.S. goods imports are not consumer products. They are industrial supplies and capital goods used by American manufacturers to produce goods, expand capacity, and invest in new equipment. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

President Trump closed the year with a clear message on affordability and Making America Great Again. The numbers now back it up. His administration is delivering one of the most aggressive deregulation efforts in modern history, and American workers and families are already seeing the benefits. New data show just how far Washington has shifted away from red tape and toward growth. In a single year, federal agencies finalized 646 deregulatory actions  while issuing just five

Colorado Governor Jared Polis just said out loud what many Democrats quietly know. School choice works. That is why Colorado will opt in to President Donald Trump’s new nationwide school choice program. The program was created as a tax credit as part of the Working Families Tax Cut, passed by President Trump and the Republican Congress in July 2025. It is a pro-family reform that directs education dollars to students and parents, not entrenched systems. Polis put it plainly.

Congress quietly delivered a major upgrade for families saving for education. The new tax law significantly expands how 529 plans can be used, making them more flexible, more practical, and better aligned with how students actually learn and train today. For families with children, or those planning ahead, these changes materially improve the value of saving through a 529 plan. What a 529 Plan Does A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged savings account designed to help families pay f

Congress is once again debating whether to extend the enhanced, temporary Obamacare subsidies enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic under the Biden administration, layered on top of the law’s permanent subsidy structure. Doing so would be a costly mistake. Most of this spending does not help patients. It enriches insurers and fuels inefficiency. The numbers make this clear. A recent analysis highlighted by the Paragon Institute , drawing on new data from the Joint Economic Com

The welfare fraud uncovered in Minnesota’s Somali community was not a minor scandal. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars meant to help the poor were siphoned off with ease. That kind of abuse does not happen in a well-designed system. It happens when federal welfare programs are so large, complex, and poorly monitored that fraud becomes inevitable. That broader failure is the focus of a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Jason Riley , which argues that the real problem goes

Source: SIPP; SHED (2022) Washington policy debates often assume seniors are the most financially vulnerable Americans. The data tells a different story. Seniors are the wealthiest age cohort in the country. By a wide margin. That outcome reflects decades of work, saving, and asset accumulation, and it should not be viewed as a failure. The real financial strain shows up elsewhere. Young families with children are far more likely to struggle with basic needs. Data shows young

Washington’s loudest voices calling to “tax the rich” keep selling the same fantasy. If billionaires just paid more, America’s debt problem would disappear. That claim collapses under even basic scrutiny. Even confiscatory tax hikes would not come close to solving the debt. The federal government could theoretically seize the entire wealth of every American billionaire and still fail to pay off even one fifth of the national debt. The math is not close. Meanwhile, the facts

Conservatives were right to be skeptical of Mitt Romney. His latest tax proposals confirm why. In a recent New York Times op-ed , Romney argues for a new round of “tax the rich” policies. They are sold as deficit reduction. In reality, they raise little revenue, hammer economic growth, and rely on class warfare talking points instead of serious reform. The proposals read more like bumper-sticker economics than a workable tax plan. Sky-High Marginal Tax Rates on Work Romney’s

A new Bloomberg report puts a hard number on something families already feel in their gut. Americans with four-year degrees now make up 25.3 percent of all unemployed workers . That is the highest share on record. When one in four unemployed Americans holds a bachelor’s degree, the system is not working. People say “college is a scam”  for a reason. It is not because they oppose education. It is because colleges have spent years drifting away from their mission while driving

Rural America should be furious. Hospital lobbyists pushed lawmakers to create loopholes that let big city hospital systems pretend to be “rural” so they can siphon off money meant for small-town care. That abuse sits at the center of the “340B” drug price discount program. What was designed to support genuinely rural and safety-net hospitals has been warped into a profit engine for large, urban hospital networks that know how to work Washington. Through technical classificat

President Trump’s approval rating on the economy is slipping, and the reason is not hard to find. According to a new AP-NORC poll, voters are souring on tariffs. That dissatisfaction is bleeding directly into broader views of Trump’s economic performance. The poll, reported by the Associated Press, shows Trump facing weaker approval on economic stewardship even as inflation concerns ease and job growth continues. The common thread behind the decline is trade policy. Voters in

Tariffs always come with a predictable sequel. First, Washington imposes new taxes on imports in the name of toughness. Then, when the economic damage becomes impossible to ignore, taxpayers are asked to clean up the mess. That cycle is playing out once again in American agriculture. A recent National Review  op-ed by Dominic Pino explains the problem clearly. In “Trump Bails Out the Farmers He Kneecapped With Tariffs Again,” Pino details how tariffs raised costs, shrank exp