Elizabeth Warren has spearheaded the Democrats’ populist economic message ever since she was elected to the Senate in 2012. After the Democrats swept into power in last week’s elections, Warren wrote a Time op-ed explaining her plan for the next two years. If you’d rather not read it, I’ll sum it up: Build Back Bidenomics.
Democrats, led by the former president’s autopen, created post-COVID inflation by pumping far too much debt-financed money into an overheating economy. He called it “Build Back Better,” but overstimulus payments sent out in the spring of 2021, along with other spendthrift policies, pushed inflation to 9.1% by the summer of ’22. Cumulative inflation surpassed 21% during Joe Biden’s long four years, though it was far higher than that in some areas.
Unfortunately, President Donald Trump did not solve this persistent problem.
Thus, Democrats seized the “affordability” issue as if they had no hand in creating it, and they used it to persuade voters to give them back the keys to the car they wrecked.
Warren’s dubious framing is a great example of what was ultimately a successful message:
In 2024, Trump swept back into power, declaring he would cut costs on “day one” and bragging he would “end inflation and make America affordable again.” Instead, Trump and Republicans took a wrecking ball to the economy, cutting health care to finance tax breaks for rich people and giant corporations, imposing chaotic tariffs, and launching a war with Iran. With astonishing brazenness, Trump has attempted to reengineer the federal government into a corruption machine designed to rake in profits for himself, his family, and his cronies.
Warren pointed to several Democrats who won in red states by promising to fix the “rigged” system of what South Carolina’s Annie Andrews dubbed “big insurance, big tech, big pharma, and the utility monopolies.” Frankly, this connects with voters because we’ve probably all groused about each of those things around our own kitchen tables. She added:
Just campaign rhetoric? Nope. Across the country, Democrats stood up for big policy changes like increasing the federal minimum wage, expanding child care, reining in Big Tech, data centers, and AI, and reforming health care. We came with plans — specific policies to dismantle a rigged system and beat back concentrated corporate power.
However, consider three economic spheres: college tuition, housing, and healthcare. Warren didn’t mention tuition or student debt in her op-ed, though she has regularly championed giving students more money, and Biden infamously transferred student loan debt to taxpayers while she cheered him on. More subsidies mean higher prices. Indeed, all three sectors have outpaced overall inflation in recent decades — and all three are areas where the federal government redistributes a lot of money.
Let’s focus on housing, which Warren does tout. “Democrats [put] in the work to earn the trust of voters,” she boasted. “Our new housing affordability law — that Donald Trump refused to sign — was a critical proof point.”
This is disingenuous for multiple reasons. First, her 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act essentially codified Trump’s executive order restricting institutional investors from buying homes. He only “refused to sign” it because he wanted Congress to pass the SAVE America Act first. Moreover, both Trump and Warren are wrong about this — the bill is, at best, inadequate and, at worst, will exacerbate housing prices.
Finally, Warren explicitly states what she wants: “We should reverse Republican health care cuts, expand health care coverage, and fund universal child care.” Furthermore, she wants to “pay for it by putting a little fairness back in the system” by “canceling the tax breaks Trump and the Republicans handed out to corporations, ultra-millionaires, and billionaires.”
Allow me to translate: She wants to raise taxes on workers and consumers via corporate taxes and redistribute that money to the least productive people in society. Corporations will reduce wages and raise prices to pay for the Warren tax hikes. Those hikes won’t “pay for” anything, either. Democrats will finance these giveaways with more debt, putting more upward pressure on inflation.
This all matters because Warren is no back-bencher. She’s the incoming chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and Reuters says she “could be at the height of her power in [the] new Congress.”
As she concluded in her op-ed, “Democrats won this election by claiming we are on the side of working people, and working people are counting on us to deliver.” Given that Democrats’ claims are false, I consider that a threat, not a promise.
