Government-made prescription drugs. $20,000 for first-time home buyers. Capped child care costs.
These are among the proposals that a cohort of left-leaning congressional Democrats argue will help their party win back working-class voters in the midterm elections and set the stage for success in the 2028 presidential election.
The suite of affordability proposals from the Congressional Progressive Caucus is the group’s opening bid in a debate within the party over what Democrats should offer voters frustrated with the current economic picture.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) has directed the chamber’s Democratic policy committee to host listening sessions with members, with voters and with advocacy groups to inform a party-wide agenda expected to be released this summer.
The progressive wing’s plan is competing with proposals from moderate Democrats who are prioritizing efforts aimed at reducing regulatory barriers and increasing competition in health care, agriculture, housing and energy.
The progressives also contend that campaigning on reversing President Donald Trump’s policies, including tariffs and Medicaid cuts, will not be enough to win voters.
“The Democratic Party needs to show that we’re not just anti-Trump, but that we also have an actual pro-working-class agenda,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Progressive Caucus.
The longtime Democratic strategy to appeal to moderate Republicans and independents in suburbs alienated the working class and branded Democrats as “the party of the status quo,” Casar said. He argued that the party should now be targeting big corporations and billionaires “that are making your life worse.”
“That’s really important,” he said. “We are willing to name villains.”
Democrats’ soul-searching began immediately after the 2024 election, when Trump swept all seven battleground states, and Democrats failed to retake the House and keep the Senate as counties swung right.
The long-standing split between the party’s centrists and progressive left once again flared up. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and others in the progressive wing of the party argued the loss reflected how the party had “abandoned working-class people.” Party leaders and Biden-Harris campaign staff largely rejected that analysis, but the debate has been reignited with the approaching midterm elections.
Over the past two decades, White voters without a college degree have increasingly shifted to the Republican Party, which has also gained with low-income voters. Polls indicate that congressional Democrats, like Republicans, have dismal approval ratings, though Republicans’ once double-digit advantage on the economy has slipped as gas prices have spiked.
Democrats universally agree their victory in November relies on highlighting what they would do to make life more affordable for Americans. They also align on targeting corruption and price-gouging, and which costs they should focus on: housing, utilities, groceries, child care, health care. But they disagree on the best approach to get there.
The progressives are pitching 10 proposals that they argue would immediately improve low- and middle-income Americans’ lives. The bills would put $1 trillion toward new housing stock, create a federal standard for utility rates, target grocery store chains and oil companies for increased prices, guarantee two weeks paid time off, increase overtime wages, and ban AI surveillance pricing, which sets customers’ prices based on their personal profile or choices. Progressives say that all of their policies have bipartisan support, citing polling data from left-leaning think tank Data for Progress.
The list includes ideas from some members who aren’t in the Progressive Caucus but are “leaning into economic populism, and I think that’s the way forward for Dems,” said Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pennsylvania).
The New Democrat Coalition, a group of 115 moderate House Democrats, released their own affordability agenda in February that focuses on promoting competition, growing the economy and reducing regulatory barriers. Their proposals “give everyone the shot to get ahead,” said the group’s chair, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Illinois).
The moderates’ plan includes proposals that they say address some of the root causes of higher prices. They want to make it easier for small farms to grow and sell their goods, boost health care transparency, give Medicare more power to negotiate drug prices, increase the minimum wage, cut bureaucratic hurdles to build more housing, implement national paid family leave, and accelerate energy permitting.
Voters want “realistic” solutions to make their lives better, Schneider said.
“It’s easy to promise voters castles in clouds. They might be beautiful castles in beautiful clouds, but they aren’t sustainable,” he said. “What we need to do is roll up our sleeves and build from the ground up a foundation that provides a future for every American family to achieve their dream.”
The Blue Dog Coalition, a smaller group of centrist Democrats, has also endorsed bills to reduce the federal budget deficit, speed energy permitting and restore Affordable Care Act tax credits that expired last year.
So far, leaders in the Democratic Party have highlighted the contours of how they want to tackle the high cost of living by focusing on undoing Trump policies.
House Democratic leadership and the party’s campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, have pledged that Democrats would roll back the administration’s tariffs, restore the ACA tax credits, and reverse some of the GOP policies implemented in the Republican tax and spending bill, such as social safety net cuts.
That high-level approach can work, as long as candidates pitch things that voters believe will make a tangible difference, said Jesse Ferguson, a strategist who previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Democrats keep showing up to a kitchen-table conversation and bringing a whiteboard full of policy diagrams,” Ferguson said. “People don’t want the whiteboard, they want to know you’ve actually sat at that table and are going to do something to make the cost not keep going up to fill the fridge.”
The party’s left wing fears that promising to roll back Trump administration policies and hammer affordability won’t be enough to woo working-class voters.
“We need to show voters what we’re fighting for,” including detailed plans to lower child care and utility costs, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). “By being specific, we put some real credibility behind it. Anybody can stand up and wave their hands and claim that they’re going to lower costs.”
Brian Poindexter, an ironworker and Democratic congressional candidate running to unseat incumbent Republican Rep. Max L. Miller in Ohio’s 7th District, endorsed the progressive plan because he thought the ideas go to the source of “the things that are making people suffer.”
But Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a member of the New Democrat Coalition who is running for reelection in one of the most competitive House districts in the country, touted his own plan that he contends strikes the balance voters in his swing district are looking for, including more competition and a fairer tax code.
“This is a country that is very progressive in my opinion, but also very libertarian. They want to make the decision,” he said.
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