Progressive Democrats who are optimistic that their party is on track to win control of the House in the midterm elections are pitching what they are calling a “New Affordability Agenda” of legislative proposals geared toward bringing down costs for Americans.
Modeled after the Contract With America that Newt Gingrich and Republicans released on their way to an overwhelming victory in the 1994 midterm elections, the document is meant to show voters that Democrats have their own policy solutions that go beyond simply dismantling President Trump’s agenda.
The platform, which is to be rolled out on Wednesday by Representative Greg Casar of Texas, the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, includes 10 new bills that address narrow issues related to the cost of living, paid for by new tax increases on wealthy Americans.
They include legislation to reduce corporate control over seed patents, create universal down payment assistance for first-time homeowners, offer federal funding for locally administered child care and make companies pay double time for overtime hours.
Notably absent from the agenda are any policies on immigration, crime or social issues, topics that have long divided Democrats. Centrists have criticized progressives in the past for pushing candidates to take positions on those issues that they believe ultimately turned off too many voters.
“There is nothing here that is problematic or toxic with the electorate, unlike the crime and immigration planks that torpedoed Democrats in the Biden era,” said Lakshya Jain, the chief executive of Split Ticket, an election data analysis firm.
That is by design.
Democrats argue that Mr. Trump’s domestic spending cuts, his entry into the war in Iran that has sent gas prices soaring and his administration’s lack of transparency about the Epstein files have created the conditions for Republicans to be swept out of power in Congress. But they concede that members of their party have yet to lay out what they would do if they had control.
Mr. Casar, who has been touring the country speaking in red districts where Republicans refuse to hold town halls, said most of the questions he gets there are from Democrats who “are sick and tired of Trump but don’t know who Democrats are anymore.”
The agenda is aimed at providing an answer with policies that are broadly popular. The progressive caucus conducted polling on the bills included in the package and found that the vast majority of voters — even Republicans — supported them.
“We’re still all in for Medicare for All and we’re still fighting for those ideas,” Mr. Casar said. “But our goal is to show voters we have new ideas to tackle the affordability crisis in addition to our longstanding flagship ideas. We can’t just campaign and say ‘affordability’ over and over again.”
The agenda is in line with Mr. Casar’s efforts to reposition the party as one that supports working people, not just the most vulnerable.
Still, some center-leaning Democrats said the plan omits some obvious steps for tackling costs while failing to include structural changes that would be most effective.
“There’s obvious things to do on affordability that they ducked,” said Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “The No. 1 thing you would do is end the tariffs,” he added, suggesting that it wasn’t proposed because progressives have historically favored tariffs.
Also missing, he said, were more ambitious changes necessary to reduce costs, such as overhauling regulations to make it easier to build housing.
Republicans dismissed the entire enterprise as a rehash of failed policies.
“This is the same far-left agenda that raised costs, just wrapped in a new name for an election year,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
But Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter and Democrat who is running against Representative Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican, in a Pennsylvania district that is one of the most competitive in the country, said the agenda appeals to the voters he is courting.
“I have three diesel pickup trucks I don’t want to fill up anymore,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. “That is the issue — and what it costs to go to the grocery store. People are just normal, and they can’t afford things right now. And people 100 percent are blaming Donald Trump and my guy Ryan Mackenzie.”
Mr. Casar said that it would be tempting for a Democratic majority to focus exclusively on holding Mr. Trump accountable and repealing his policies.
“Those are important,” he said, “but we have to be more than an anti-Trump party.”
Morris Katz, the Democratic media strategist behind rising stars on the left like Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and Graham Platner, the populist oysterman running for Senate in Maine, said that the candidates he is working for this cycle are eager to run on consensus affordability measures.
“We’re at this moment when we’re defining what the big tent looks like,” Mr. Katz said in an interview. “Populist ideas that poll incredibly well and meet this moment of economic anxiety and inequality can be the unifying factors.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/us/politics/democrats-affordability-midterms.html
