Biden Crushed Your Budget. Republicans Were Hired to Fix It. Check the Receipt.

Let me say this first so nobody files this column under cheerleading for the last guy: the Biden years were an affordability disaster, and I'm not rewriting them. Inflation hit 9.1% in June 2022. At that point food at home was up 12.2% from a year earlier and gasoline was up 59.9%. By January 2025 the overall price level was still about 21% higher than it had been in January 2021. Groceries, housing, insurance, vehicles, all of it. People walked into the 2024 election carrying years of receipts, and they were right to be angry.

That anger was a big part of Trump's return. AP VoteCast found about 6 in 10 voters who named the economy and jobs as the country's top issue voted for Trump, and voters who ranked inflation as the most important factor were almost twice as likely to vote for Trump as for Harris. The economy wasn't the only reason he won. But I don't think anyone can honestly argue that voters weren't expecting relief. They changed the people in charge because they wanted the bill to come down.

Then they gave Republicans everything. As of this month the party holds the White House, 53 Senate seats and 218 House seats. That kills the usual excuse that divided government tied their hands. When one party owns every lever, the only question left is what it did with them.

Here's what I keep coming back to: voters were promised relief from a high price level, not a gentler climb up the same mountain. Inflation did slow from the Biden peak, and I'll give credit where it's earned. Used vehicles and auto insurance have improved. But prices didn't go back down. By August 2026, CPI was still rising 3.4% year over year. Shelter was up another 3.0%, rent 2.7%, hospital services 5.2%, vehicle maintenance and repair 5.2%. Gasoline was up 27.4%. Nobody pays their landlord in year-over-year improvement.

Gas is the clearest test, so let's run it. Using the EIA's weekly national all-grades series, Biden had 26 weekly readings above $4 a gallon in his entire four years. Trump has already logged 25 of them in 2026, through September 28. Biden's peak was higher, $5.107 in June 2022, and I'll say so plainly. But the September 28 reading was $4.603. In one year, Trump is a single $4-plus week away from matching Biden's whole presidency. He campaigned on cheaper energy. Instead, CBO says the 2026 Iran conflict disrupted oil and natural gas shipments, raised gasoline and diesel prices, and pushed inflation higher, adding 2.3 percentage points to the annualized PCE inflation rate in the second quarter. A war that began on this administration's watch became one of the forces pushing your fuel bill up. This week our own coverage has the Senate stalling on a gas tax holiday, while Ohio has suspended its gas taxes and Michigan hasn't made a move.

If you want the human version of all this, forget the charts and look at Buy Now, Pay Later. AP reported Americans spent more than $160 billion through BNPL in 2025, and pay-in-four use is up nearly 80% since 2023. Federal Reserve research found one in five BNPL users used it for groceries or food delivery. Among users making under $50,000, that jumps to 29%. And 45% of the people who financed groceries or food delivery said BNPL was the only way they could afford the purchase. Think about that. We are splitting dinner into four installments. Americans are financing groceries, bills, transportation and even rent, and somebody in Washington wants to tell them the economy is doing fine.

The bigger debt picture isn't any prettier. New York Fed data put total household debt at $18.771 trillion in the second quarter of 2026: $1.263 trillion on credit cards, $1.713 trillion in auto loans, $1.651 trillion in student debt, $13.117 trillion in mortgages. About 4.7% of it was in some stage of delinquency. Then there's the cost of borrowing. Freddie Mac had the average 30-year fixed mortgage at 7.28% on October 1, and our own money desk is reporting rates at the highest in almost four years. Even if home prices stop climbing fast, a 7% mortgage keeps a lot of families on the wrong side of the front door.

Now the part Republicans swore they'd handle: the government's own checkbook. The gross national debt crossed $40 trillion in August. I won't pretend Trump created all of it. That pile was built by both parties across many administrations, Biden's and Trump's included. But the fiscal turnaround that was promised isn't in the top-line numbers. CBO estimates the deficit ran about $2 trillion through the first 11 months of fiscal 2026, almost exactly the same headline figure as a year earlier, and $82 billion worse once you adjust for payment timing.

That's where DOGE belongs in the conversation, and I'll describe it accurately. It was set up as a temporary organization with a July 4, 2026 termination date, and it ended on schedule. Nobody pulled the plug in a panic. DOGE's own website claims about $215 billion in estimated savings. That's a claim, not an audit, and even taken at face value it's roughly a tenth of a $2 trillion annual deficit. After all the hype, the firings and the contract cancellations, the honest question is whether anybody can see a change in the government's direction. I can't. The deficit looks the same.

The labor market doesn't ride to the rescue either. September's jobs report showed 29,000 payroll jobs added and unemployment at 4.2%, with job growth averaging just 45,000 a month over the prior year. I'm not calling this a recession, and I won't claim every measure is worse than it was. The stock market has had a decent year, and plenty of people with money in it are doing fine. The point is the gap between the relief voters expected and what they can see in the grocery bill, the gas tank, the rent check, the mortgage payment and the credit card statement.

So let's be honest about who owns what. Biden owns the price surge that wrecked household budgets on his watch, and he deserves every bit of criticism for it. Trump and a Republican Congress own what they promised to fix and haven't. Americans changed governments, handed one party total control, and for a lot of households the bill looks basically the same or worse. I'm done accepting 'it's the other guy's fault' from either team. If you ask for the keys, you own the car. My read is that voters will remember who was holding them this November.