Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Truth Social, Gettr, X, Youtube, Instagram
Doral, Florida - In these midterm elections, problems with affordability have become a weapon wielded by Democrats against Republicans and the Trump administration. These problems, however, are mostly caused by the progressive policies that Democrats advocate and implement, especially during the Obama-Biden 3.0 administration of 2021-25. During that time, the annual inflation rate averaged over five percent annually, and over 20% in total. The three major areas of problems are: (1) the price of gasoline; (2) the price of diesel fuel; and (3) interest rates on residential mortgage loans.
Household budgets across America face sustained pressure from elevated costs of gasoline, diesel fuel and mortgage rates. As of mid-October 2026, the national average price of regular gasoline stood near $4.33 per gallon, up roughly 40 percent from a year earlier, according to Energy Information Administration weekly data. On-highway diesel fuel averaged about $6.18 per gallon in the same period—nearly 70 percent higher year-over-year—and had touched a high above $6.50 in September. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate held at 7.40 percent, its highest level in nearly three years and well above the 6.27 percent reading of a year prior (Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey).
These figures are not abstract. They translate directly into higher commuting costs, higher freight rates that raise the price of goods, and higher monthly housing payments that price out buyers. While global markets and monetary conditions set the broad direction of prices, progressive policy choices on energy production, environmental regulation, taxation and spending policies have amplified the damage to affordability.
Gasoline Prices
The retail price of gasoline is driven first by the cost of crude petroleum, which typically accounts for roughly half the pump price, followed by refining costs and margins, distribution and marketing, and federal and state taxes (EIA breakdowns). Global crude prices respond to supply and demand, geopolitical risk and inventory levels. Progressive domestic policy nevertheless has affected the American contribution to supply, and the regulatory cost of turning crude petroleum into gasoline and diesel fuel.
Progressive restrictions on new leasing and production on federal lands, lengthy permitting timelines, and opposition to pipeline and refining capacity expansions reduce the volume of domestic barrels that can reach the market when global tightness appears. Environmental rules that mandate specialized gasoline blends—most notably in California and other West Coast jurisdictions—limit the number of refineries that can serve a region and raise the cost of compliance. California’s combination of high state fuel taxes (among the nation’s highest), Cap-and-Trade, and Low Carbon Fuel Standard programs produces pump prices that routinely run $1.50–$2.00 above the national average. California has also shut down two major refineries in the last couple of years. These are progressive policy choices, not geological constraints.
Taxes are the most transparent lever. The federal gasoline tax remains at 18.4 cents per gallon, and average state taxes add roughly 33 cents, with wide variation. States that have pursued aggressive climate targets have layered additional fees and requirements. When crude prices rise, the absolute cost of those fixed and percentage-based levies rises with them, magnifying the hit to household budgets. The result is that households in high-regulation Blue States face both higher baseline prices and greater volatility. Lower-income drivers, who spend a larger share of income on fuel and have fewer alternatives to personal vehicles, absorb the largest relative burden. The affordability problem is overwhelmingly a problem of Blue States rather than Red States.
Diesel Fuel
Diesel prices have moved even more sharply. The year-to-date 2026 average through mid-October stood above $5.00 per gallon, with recent weekly readings near $6.18 and a September peak of $6.53. Diesel is the primary fuel for long-haul trucking, rail, agriculture and construction. When its price rises, freight rates follow, and the cost of moving food, building materials and manufactured goods increases throughout the economy. Those increases appear as higher shelf prices for consumers who never buy diesel fuel themselves.
The same policy channels that affect gasoline operate on diesel. Refining capacity is constrained by the same progressive permitting and environmental standards. Demand for ultra-low-sulfur diesel and renewable blending requirements adds cost. Because diesel is a distillate product whose yield cannot be shifted freely by refiners, tight global distillate markets transmit quickly into American prices. Progressive energy policy that prioritizes rapid phase-downs of fossil fuel infrastructure, without equivalent expansion of refining or alternative logistics capacity, leaves the transmission system exposed. The economic incidence falls disproportionately on goods that must travel long distances.
Residential Mortgage Interest Rates
Housing costs are the largest single item in most household budgets. At a 7.40 percent 30-year fixed rate, the monthly principal-and-interest payment on a $400,000 loan is roughly $375 higher than it would have been at the 5.98 percent low briefly reached in late February 2026. Relative to the sub-3 percent rates of 2021, the difference is far larger. Combined with still-elevated home prices, the result is a sharp decline in the share of median-income households that can qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home.
Mortgage rates are not set by the Federal Reserve’s overnight rate; they track the 10-year Treasury yield plus a credit and prepayment spread. That yield has risen because of persistent inflation and large federal deficits that increase the supply of Treasuries, both progressive policies made worse during the Obama-Biden 3.0 administration. In addition, there has been an increase in the premium demanded by investors. Inflation itself has been fed by excessive federal spending and expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve.
These progressive policy priorities and resistance to energy-supply expansion have contributed to the inflation that forces the bond market to keep real rates higher for longer. Housing supply is further constrained by local zoning, environmental review and impact-fee regimes that progressive jurisdictions have expanded. The combination of higher financing costs and restricted new construction locks in high prices and high payments.
Policy Transmission and Trade-offs
All these prices are kept high by progressive policies. Crude petroleum is a global commodity, and so geopolitical events, OPEC decisions, and demand growth in Asia matter. Mortgage rates reflect global capital flows and inflation expectations. Yet policy choices alter the margin. Expanding domestic production and refining capacity, streamlining permitting, and moderating specialized fuel mandates, would increase supply and reduce the pass-through of global shocks. Holding the line on fuel taxes and avoiding layered climate fees would lower the fixed component of the pump price. On the housing side, spending restraint that reduces upward pressure on Treasury yields, together with regulatory reforms that increase housing supply, would ease both the interest-rate and the housing price components of the affordability equation.
Conclusion
Affordability is not destroyed by a single administration. It is eroded by the cumulative weight of progressive policies that restrict energy supply, raise compliance costs and increase taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, thereby contributing to higher prices. Current prices—roughly $4.33 for gasoline, $6.18 for diesel, and 7.40 percent for the 30-year mortgage—illustrate the outcome. Reversing the damage requires expanding domestic energy production and refining capacity, rationalizing fuel regulations and taxes, restraining the growth of federal deficits, and reforming housing-supply regulatory constraints, all opposed by progressives. Absent those changes, progressive policy preferences on energy and fiscal matters will continue to extract a toll on household budgets. The data on pump prices and mortgage rates already document the cost.
Higher interest rates, including on residential mortgage loans, are caused by investors concluding that governments worldwide are overspending and over-borrowing, including our federal government. This situation is driven by progressive policies.
Voting for Democrats to resolve problems of affordability is completely counterproductive. It is their progressive policies that have caused the problems of affordability. The American-Israeli war on the Jihadist government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has put pressure on the global supply of petroleum, thereby increasing gasoline and diesel fuel prices. That is a small price to pay for preventing the death-cult regime in Tehran from obtaining nuclear missiles. These missiles already had Rome and the Vatican within range. President Trump’s response is better than President Obama’s. He sent pallets of cash to his fellow Jihadists.
