US Debts and their costs keep jumping. But so far it's getting shrugged off

As interest rates in the bond market keep rising, it makes this week’s auctions of new Treasury debt worth checking in on. It includes the 3-year note on Tuesday, benchmark 10-year Treasury note on Wednesday, and 30-year bond on Thursday.

The 3-year auction was for $58 billion in US government debt, and in looking at the auction results from the US Treasury, it shows the yield on those bonds was significantly higher than what was being offered by bidders 3 months ago.

I also notice the coupon rate, which tells us how much interest will be paid on the $1,000 face value of those 3-year bonds, has gone up by a similar amounts of basis points between July and October.

Coupon rate, 3-year Treasury bond
July 2026 4.125%
Aug 2026 4.25%
Sept 2026 4.375%
Oct 2026 4.875%

Given that $58 billion was auctioned off in each of these months, this means the US Treasury is increasing interest payments by $435 million a year for October’s set of 3-year bonds vs July’s set.

That $435 million in additional interest takes the total annual interest payments on these 3-year bond issues from less than $2.4 billion to nearly $2.83 billion. Now multiply that $58 billion by 32.5, and you are around the $1.887 trillion that our budget deficit is projected to be for Fiscal Year 2027.

Multiply the $2.83 billion in interest by that same 32.5 and you get $92 billion in debt payments from new bonds issued this year alone. Multiply that by all the years of previous bonds with interest that we are also paying off (issued between 1997 and 2025) and….YIKES!

You can see where if we run high deficits for years, the costs start to build upon themselves. Which goes to a report that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sent to US Senator Jeff Merkeley less than 2 weeks ago, which discussed what would happen if interest rates were higher than earlier projections.

In the first scenario, the average interest rate on federal debt would increase until it was 1 percentage point higher than in CBO’s extended baseline (before incorporating effects on the broader economy, known as macroeconomic effects, that would further increase interest rates). CBO estimates that under those conditions, deficits and debt would be larger:

• Primary deficits over the 2026–2036 period would be about $178 billion larger overall than they are in CBO’s baseline. In 2056, the primary deficit would be 2.6 percent of GDP, 0.4 percentage points larger than in the extended baseline.

• Total deficits over the 2026–2036 period would be about $1.5 trillion larger overall than they are in the baseline. In 2056, the total deficit would be 14.0 percent of GDP, 4.9 percentage points larger than in CBO’s extended baseline.

• Debt held by the public in 2056 would be 222 percent of GDP, 47 percentage points larger than in CBO’s extended baseline.

What was the baseline 10-year interest rate that CBO projected for Fiscal Year 2026 (which just ended last week)? 4.1%. And for FY 2027 (which we are now in)? 4.3%.

Now what is the 10-year trading for on the markets these days?

Uh oh….

Also, copied in on this CBO memo? It’s the current chair of the Senate Budget Committee!

Remember when this guy claimed the US debt was America’s biggest threat instead of vaccines? Funny how tens of millions of dollars in election assistance from Diane Hendricks and the Uihleins helped to get RoJo’s mind off of the debt. (Giving himself tens of millions in tax cuts along the way also helped).

Yet the Bubbly stock market keeps powering through these higher debts and interest rates, which seems odd given how strung out on debt a lot of these companies are. But as long as businesses and consumers keep spending despite the higher borrowing costs, the US economy will keep growing. And the debt and its higher rates will be more of a stat instead of an economic problem.

I just don’t understand how it keeps going, as prices rise faster than wages, and the costs of debt keep going up for everybody. There’s a point where markets and people just say NO MORE, right?

Recent Brewers runs haven't done much for Milwaukee Co budgets. Is this year different?

Great sports weekend here in Wisconsin, topped off by this.

That also included two packed houses at American Family Field, and that hit guarantees at least one more home game in Milwaukee (and more than one should the Brewers finish off the Padres this week). Which means a lot of money was being spent in the Milwaukee area for this weekend.

But how much more, and how much was actually being added to the economy and local government tax revenue in that weekend? Milwaukee’s tourism organization has a number with that.

Each postseason Brewers game at American Family Field will generate an estimated $3.55 million in direct spending at hotels, restaurants and other area businesses, according to Visit Milwaukee. That publicly funded nonprofit group promotes Milwaukee as a travel destination.

That figure, which doesn't include money spent at the ballpark, rises to $5.1 million for each game when it takes into account the multiplier effect. That includes re-spending of those dollars within the local economy by vendors/suppliers and households that benefit from direct spending.

"We expect a beautiful October," said Josh Albrecht, Visit Milwaukee chief marketing officer.

The direct spending estimate per game includes lodging, $641,634; transportation, $551,301; food and beverage, $655,410; retail, $870,201; recreation, $682,244, business services, $145,402, and space rental, $5,570.

Well that’s pretty good, and as mentioned, that doesn’t count what those 44,000+ fans are paying for tickets, food, gear, and other items at the ballpark.

In theory, that should cause a sizable increase in local sales taxes. But it doesn’t appear to be the case, if you look at the combined November and December sales tax distributions in Milwaukee County for the last three years (which would reflect sales taxes paid in September and October).

Interestingly, Milwaukee County’s additional 0.4% sales tax has to be tracked due to that money being earmarked for pension costs, with any remainder going to law enforcement and fire protection services. So the Wisconsin Department of Revenue still reports how much was raised with the original 0.5% sales tax, so we can go apples-to-apples on this. Combined Nov and Dec sales tax distributions, Mke Co. Using 0.5% sales tax base.
2023 (2 Brewer home playoff games) $18.128 million
2024 (3 Brewer home playoff games) $16.968 million
2025 (5 Brewer home playoff games) $16.191 million

Those are three straight declines, which is odd and unexpected due to inflation. But I’ll also add that sales tax revenues were level between 2023 and 2024 for the first 10 months of the year, and were up nearly 7% in the first 10 months of 2025, so it shows how sales taxes distributions can be jumpy in a short time period.

That said, it doesn’t seem that there has been a significant impact on Milwaukee County’s budget based on the Brewers’ playoff appearances of the previous three years. Which makes me wonder how much of the economic impact is displacement of other spending that happens, either within Milwaukee County itself or in the nearby area.

However, we haven’t seen what has happened in a longer Brewers run, particularly if they could get more than 5 playoff games at home and especially if the Crew were to make the World Series (gasp!). Along with the additional game-related revenues, you’d see more outside media and related out-of-staters coming into town and staying in the Milwaukee area if the Brewers made the Series.

If the Brewers qualified for the Series (we’ll know soon enough, won't we?), the Milwaukee County Board could in theory make an adjustment to David Crowley’s 2027 budget and remove part or all of the $7.87 million in increased property tax revenues with the idea of a one-time boost in sales taxes. But it seems risky, as the effect of recent Brewers playoff runs hasn’t had a noticeable effect on Milwaukee County sales tax revenues.

That said, I’d love to find out what a month’s worth of playoff games would do. And have this next month repeat what happened in another year when there was an open Governor’s race in Wisconsin at the same time that Dems stood to make big gains in midterms.

That’s also in a game vs a California team where the Crew was trailing 3-2 at home. And Jim Gantner and Sal Frelick look pretty similar coming around 3rd and diving into home, don’t they? Also happened to be preceded in scoring by Number 22 (RIP Charlie Moore).

I’ll take a repeat of 1982 this October, outside of the double-digit unemployment. Hopefully the good guys win the Big One this time, should they get that far.

Medicaid deficit drops in Wisconsin! But it'll be back up soon enough, and Sconnies will pay more.

This week marked the end of the 3rd Quarter of 2026, which allowed for another update in the projections for Wisconsin’s Medicaid budget. These reports come in every three months, and back on June 30, we were projected to need an additional $322.4 million in state tax dollars (known as GPR among budget folks) to pay all the bills in that program between then and June 30, 2027.

So do we need even more money for Medicaid now?

…Overall, the Department projects an improvement of $53.2 million compared to the GPR shortfall projected in June.

That brings the shortfall down to $269.2 million, and it’s the first time that deficit has shrunk in the 15 months of this budget cycle.

How did that happen? Because of a lack of spending on Medicaid services at schools.

Since the June update, we have taken additional measures that have had the net effect of reducing the projected biennial deficit. Federal revenue claimed for school medical services are governed by s.49.45(39), which requires the Department to pay 60% of the federal share for allowable charges for services to school districts. Consistent with Chapter 20 language for Medicaid appropriations, because the program remains in a projected deficit, the Department used the federal revenue amounts not allocated to school districts for FY 26 to offset GPR costs for Medicaid benefits…This is consistent with the statutory intent that federal revenue be used to offset the non-federal (GPR) share of Medicaid benefits. The Department plans to take the same approach in FY 27.

Retaining these revenues improved the projected deficit by $122.4 million GPR. This approach does not affect the amount of revenues that school districts receive for Medicaid services under current state law.

So this is a one-time deal, at least until next June. And if the backfill was over $122 million, why didn’t the deficit go down by that much?

In addition, this projection updates expenditure trends across multiple service lines for the remaining quarters of FY 27 based on additional expenditure and revenue data since June. These updates have the effect of increasing costs by $69.2 million GPR.

Which means the deficit will likely be going back up when we get the next report at the end of this year. These numbers also include assumptions of some people being cut off of Medicaid in the coming months due to red tape and other barriers, to help pay for the giveaways to the rich and corporate in Trump/GOP Tax Scam 2.0.

Let's also remember that the state's Medicaid and SNAP food assistance costs are scheduled to go up by another $2 billion in the next 2 years. That's mostly due to those higher costs of health care, but also is boosted because Tom Tiffany and the rest of the Republicans in DC pushed more of SNAP's costs onto state taxpayers.

Lastly, the extra budget costs do not include the burden many Wisconsinites will have to take on, as they wil be paying more out of pocket for health care costs and premiums next year. Filings indicate Obamacare premiums in Wisconsin will rise by 21% after Trump/GOP has messed with health care so much over the last 2 years. Upstream of that, recent estimates have both employer and employee health care premium costs rising by 8-10% for 2027, putting a burden on people in a time when they can least afford it.

Seems like a good time to remind people that David Crowley is one of many Democratic candidates at the state level who wants to add competition to the state's health care market, which could lower that $2 billion in additional costs that the state Department of Health Services would have to pay.

Open BadgerCare enrollment to any household that wants it, using federal Medicaid matching funds to cover portions of cost.

Use a sliding-scale premium based on income, with targeted subsidies for small businesses, farmers, gig workers, single parents, and college students.

Make BadgerCare comprehensive — medical, dental, and vision — focused on preventive, primary, and mental health care.

Ensure no one is out of network by supporting provider participation with incentives, especially for rural communities.

Seems to be a much better solution to Wisconsin's increasingly costly health care than what passes for Tom Tiffany's plan, which is.....tell people a little more on how much their health services are gonna cost?

Will that help any Wisconsinite pay for those services? OF COURSE NOT! Do you seriously think Tom Tiffany is going to help you afford health care as your costs keep going up? HAHAHAHAHA!

But Tiffany might make health care more "affordable" for the state's budget by cutting it even more, so that there'd be funds available for more giveaways to the 3 billionaires that have funded 90% of his campaign.

Vote accordingly, folks.

Back to "low-hire, low-fire" for September. But lousy wage growth is the real problem

We've seen a lot of strong macroeconomic numbers for August, including an initially reported gain of 162,000 jobs in that month. But gas and especially diesel prices kept spiralling higher in September, and it made Friday's jobs report one of the first indicators as to whether things had changed as Summer ended.

It now looks like August's big gains were a fluke, and September now has fewer jobs reported than what was reported for the previous month.

The US labor market hit a soft patch in September as the economy added just 29,000 jobs and the unemployment rate increased to 4.2%, new Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed Friday.

The latest jobs report – and the final official employment snapshot before the midterm elections – also showed that recent months’ hiring was weaker than previously thought and that wage growth slowed, putting Americans’ paychecks further behind the 8-ball at a time when inflation has accelerated.....

September’s job gains marked a slowdown from August, when a downwardly revised 133,000 jobs were added. (Economists had previously cautioned that August’s surprisingly strong gains likely reflected some seasonal factors that overstated hiring activity.) In addition, July turned negative, with 10,000 jobs lost (previously a 21,000-job gain).

Well that's no good, and when you average these numbers out over three months, we're back to the tepid levels of job growth that we have had for most of 2026.

But one positive in this report is the continued growth in construction jobs in September (+11,000), and manufacturing has also been reporting gains in jobs recently (+9,000).

On the flip side, how lousy would the US jobs market be if we didn't have all these AI data centers pumping up construction jobs (and what happens when that Bubble inevitably pops)?

Moving over to the household survey that determines the unemployment rate, we had a slight nudge up from 4.1% to 4.2%. But that was for the "good reason", as the labor force grew by a (seasonally-adjusted) 485,000 and the number of people employed was up by 406,000. However, I'd add that the gains in the last 2 months seem to be a regression from the big declines we saw earlier in the Summer, and the number of people participating in the labor force and working is merely back where things were 6 months ago.

But to me, the bigger story came later in the jobs report. And it was the continuance of a bad trend.

That's the 12-month growth in average hourly wages, and it's down to 3.0% after a lame 0.1% increase in September. That puts us back in pre-2020 levels of wage growth with much higher inflation than we had in the 2010s. And do you see that getting any better any time soon? Me neither.

I'm not overly concerned with what I saw in the US jobs report for September from the payrolls and unemployment rate. It just confirmed we're still in this "low fire, low hire" mode that we've been in for most of Trump 2.0. But the lack of wage growth means that Americans fell even further behind in September as regular gas surged well past $4 at the pump, and you'd have to think that Republicans are going to feel the anger from those voters that are having any economic advancement be further out of reach, no matter if they still have their jobs.

Income-spending revisions make things a bit better than they were, but the bad trends are the same

Even as gas prices started back on the rise, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on Wednesday that overall price increases had settled down in August.

A fresh reading on the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge released Wednesday showed prices cooled more than expected in August — and is likely to quell some of the urgency for another interest rate hike next month.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Index rose 3.4% in August, less than expectations for 3.7% — a level held for much of the summer. Excluding volatile energy and food prices, core PCE rose 3%, beating expectations for a rise of 3.3% and marking a drop from 3.3% in July. Month over month, core PCE inched down a tenth of a percentage point to 0.2% from July and beat expectations of a 0.3% rise.

But most of the “drop” from 3.3% is actually due to a recalibration of the PCE index for prices that first took effect today. The Royal Bank of Canada gave an easy-to-understand analysis on the modifications to US PCE inflation.

RBC says that the two main sectors that caused that change were:

· Portfolio management and investment advice services.
· Computer software and accessories.

And the main reason why seems to be related to how the basic unit of these product is determined. For portfolio/investment work, it’s this.

The new methodology replaces the PPI series with a derived price index, obtained through the relationship between nominal and real spending—where real spending is implied by the new quantity extrapolator (i.e., hours worked and aggregate earnings).

RBC says that PCE was also having computer software run hot, because there are more units needed than what was previously assumed.

The PCE price index for computer software and accessories has been significantly elevated since November 2025. The average contribution to headline PCE has run strong at 0.12 percentage point between November 2025 and July 2026, unusual for a segment that typically subtracted from inflation prior to 2025. This likely reflects recent demand surges for memory and computing products.

Put it together, RBC says it will tamper down the PCE inflation numbers that have been reported for this year by a small amount.

We anticipate an 18-basis-point reduction in the annual pace of core PCE as a result—meaning core PCE in July would be revised down to 3.1% from 3.3%.

Importantly, we caution against misinterpreting a lower-than-expected reading on Wednesday as a sign of disinflation ahead.

Year-over-year core PCE still dropped in August from that 3.1% to 3.0%, so good sign there. But that’s still well above the alleged 2% target that the Fed wants, and for both core and overall PCE inflation, it’s still not much different than the year-over-year inflation levels we’ve had for most of 2026.

And if you look at the PCE energy numbers, this measure already feels irrelevant to where we are today. “Gasoline and other energy goods” rose by 4.4% in August, but was still down 7.8% compared to May, according to the BEA.

But we know gas prices have gone up nearly 10% from the end of August and end of September and is now back at May’s highs. So you would think the PCE numbers are headed higher in the next report (which conveniently drops the week before the midterms, after many Americans have voted). And if some of America’s record-high diesel prices are getting passed ahead into other products, that core number will be over 3.0% as well.

On the income side, growth was a tepid 0.2%, making for a third straight month of weak increases.

However, that report also showed additional evidence of American consumers continuing to spend in August. That increase is spending of 0.8% was significantly higher than the increase in disposable income, as it has for most of 2026.

This made for a significant decline in US personal saving of more than $122 billion for August. And yet, the personal savings rate went from less than 3% in July’s report to 4.1%. I saw it, and immediately said "WHAT IS THAT?"

Turns out the BEA also used today to release five years of revisions for both national output (GDP and such) and income and spending stats. And it led to a sizable modification for both the income and spending side.

For income, there was a significant undercounting of the money that Americans made on interest over the previous three years, in the wake of the Fed raising interest rates in 2022 and 2023 and then keeping them at levels well above the 0% rates of the COVID era. Conversely, income from dividends and income to business owners was overstated from 2023 through 2025, while the original reports of worker income were pretty much on target.

The big piece of missing data that we will start to see in the next couple of weeks is whether the spike in gasoline and especially diesel prices started to make American consumers back off of their high-spending ways. Or did they save even less, which should make the Fed more likely to raise rates again to get that Bubbly, inflationary behavior to stop?

Also, can American workers get any benefit in wage growth, or will they continue to fall further behind as prices keep going higher? Things kept moving along in August, but this unsustainable pattern has to change some time soon, doesn't it?

US gas prices, bonds and debts all aren't showing what you want

Here in Wisconsin, you may have noticed that gas prices have been on a roller coaster for September. AAA says that regular gas prices in our state are up 43 cents a gallon in the last month (+11.3%). But AAA also says gas prices have gone down 14 cents in Wisconsin over the last week, while there has been little change nationwide.

The average national regular gas price has been over $4 a gallon for more than two months. Combine those two months of $4 gas with the two-and-a-half months above $4 in the Spring and early Summer, and we are nearing the five-and-a-half months that gas was above $4 in 2022. In addition, prices at the pump today are also significantly above what regular gas was in late September 2022.

Continued higher gas prices are a reason why US bonds keep selling off, as there is an expectation of inflation and interest rates going higher and staying there for a while. The 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields have especially spiked in the last 3 months, as oil and gas prices have re-surged.

10-year note

30-year bond

But maybe ongoing inflation is part of Trump/GOP’s plan. Remember how I mentioned that Scott Bessent claimed the growing US debt wasn’t a problem because America "would grow its way” out of it a few weeks ago? Fortune magazine (via Yahoo Finance) followed up on that, and noted how higher US economic output could make debt seem less burdensome.

….the prospect of a hot economy that adds more inflationary pressure has sent Treasury yields soaring, creating a heavier burden for servicing $40 trillion in U.S. debt.

That means the economy is stuck on a hamster wheel, scurrying to outrun borrowing costs and avoid a reduction in speed that allows debt to grow faster than the economy.

For now, GDP is staying ahead of interest rates. While growth adjusted for inflation has been around 2%, nominal growth has been well above 6%—still more than the 5.16% 10-year yield, even after it jumped more than a full percentage point since the Iran war began.

Growth in the third quarter could show even more acceleration, as a recent gauge of U.S. business activity for September hit a five-year high.

There’s one problem with this – you need tax revenues to also grow at a faster rate than the bond yields to limit the growth at the debt. And so far, that isn’t happening, since overall federal tax receipts are only up 3.3% for Fiscal Year 2026 vs FY 2025, with September’s numbers left to wrap up the Federal Fiscal Year.

US tax receipts, FY 2026 vs FY 2025 thru Aug
FY 2025 $4,690.95 Billion
FY 2026 $4,845.45 Billion

That’s not going to cover the 5.25% interest on the existing 10-year bonds- or 5.6% on the 30-year, let alone the additional debt that has to be sold for each year the US runs a budget deficit.

But we would be coming close to having nominal tax revenues increase past the higher debt costs if we had corporations paying the same amount of taxes as they were before Trump/GOP signed Tax Scam 2.0 into law.

US corporate tax receipts, FY 2026 vs FY 2025 thru Aug
FY 2025 $389.61 Billion
FY 2026 $294.86 Billion (-24.3%)

This is directly what should be happening, as corporate profits have gone through the roof in the last year. Seems worthy to mention as debt costs keep spiraling in this country.

And one last item to note - the higher inflation of 2026 means that 2027's Social Security payments will likely rise by the largest rate in four years, and with inflation outpacing wage increases, income taxes go down due to annual indexing that raises how much income is taxed at a lower rate.

I can't see these as good trends for this country'a economic outlook, can you?

Incomes up and "official" poverty down for 2025. But costs were up, and it's definitely worse in 2026

Earlier this month, the US Census Bureau gave its annual updates for income and poverty in America for the previous year. On the income side, it looks like 2025 was a very good year, as inflation-adjusted incomes rose to a new record level.

In 2025, median household income was $87,460, an increase of 2.6 percent from the 2024 estimate of $85,210. Household income in 2025 was the highest on record dating back to 1967….

Median household income after accounting for taxes and credits increased by 3.1 percent, from $73,760 in 2024 to $76,060 in 2025.

As you can see, most demographics of American households gained vs inflation in 2025, but there is still a wide disparity of incomes among groups.

However, not everybody got ahead in 2025. This detail was notable to me, given that Trump won in 2024 in no small part due to bros of all races thinking that Mr. Businessman would help them get richer.

Among full-time, year-round workers, median earnings increased 3.2 percent for women but did not change significantly for men between 2024 and 2025.

For full-time, year-round workers, the female-to-male earnings ratio in 2025 increased to 83.9 percent from 80.6 percent in 2024.

In fact, men who worked full-time and year-round saw their inflation-adjusted earnings drop by 0.9%. Not enough for statistical significance, but an interesting decline in the face of women having those gains. Hispanic Americans (a group that heavily shifted toward Trump in 2024, allegedly on economic reasons) also saw earnings from their full-time job fall behind inflation last year.

Of course, many households are two-earner households, so that may help explain why overall household incomes went up by a rate close to those by women working full-time or we have a lot more people working multiple jobs. There are also other ways to earn income besides work, with those people seeming to be doing especially well in these Bubbly times.

Moving over to the poverty side, the lowest percentage of Americans were in poverty in decades, if you look at things from an income perspective.

In 2025, the official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2 per cent, the third consecutive annual decline and one of the lowest rates on record (Figure 1). There were 34.5 million people in poverty in 2025.

So if poverty keeps declining and incomes were beating inflation in 2025, why did so many Americans not like the way things were going by the end of that year? The Census's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) may fill in why.

Figure 4 presents SPM and official+ estimates from 2009 to 2025. The overall SPM rate (13.1 percent) was 2.9 percentage points higher than the official+ rate (10.2 percent) in 2025. In recent years, differences in how the poverty thresholds are adjusted explain part of this gap. While the official poverty thresholds are annually adjusted using the CPI-U, which includes a wide range of consumer expenditures, the SPM thresholds are based on a 5-year moving average of expenditures for a smaller bundle of goods, lagged by 1 year. When the cost of one or more of the components of the SPM bundle, such as food, outpaces overall inflation, it causes the SPM thresholds to increase more than if they were simply adjusted by the CPI-U or another inflation factor.

Notice how the SPM was lower than the official poverty rate for 2020 and 2021? That reflects the addition of items such as the expanded child tax credit, continuous Medicaid enrollment and other supports during the COVID pandemic. Then those supports went away in 2022 and beyond, while costs got higher, and this SPM chart helps explain why "affordability" is an issue that is overriding any increase in income for many Americans.

Let me also give you the footnote that explains the difference in the two cost-inflation bundles.

The CPI-U includes expenditures on food and beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education and communications, and other goods and services. The SPM bundle of goods includes food, clothing, shelter, utilities, telephone, and internet.

With food, shelter, and utilities being particularly inflated in the 2020s, it’s not surprising that the SPM is higher than the official poverty rate these days, especially for older Americans.

In 2025, the SPM rate for 18- to 64-year-olds was 12.3 percent, while the official+ rate was 9.2 percent. Those 65 years and older had the largest gap between measures (5.6 percentage points), with an SPM rate of 15.4 percent and an official+ rate of 9.8 percent. The larger gap among those 65 years and older was primarily due to differences in the treatment of medical expenses between the two measures—medical expenses are subtracted from resources in the SPM but are not accounted for in the official poverty measure.

Then realize that 2025 was the last year before the expanded tax credits for Obamacare policies were taken away, causing sizable increases for many Americans in their health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Combine that with higher inflation without higher wages in this year, and it seems likely that 2026’s SPM poverty measure will be the highest in nearly a decade.

2025 wasn’t great in general, but for a lot of Americans, it might be the best we get for a few years when it came to incomes and making ends meet. And if that’s true, I sure wouldn’t want to be running for office as a member of the Republican Party that cut health care supports and supported policies that led to price hikes, leading a lot of Americans to believe things are significantly worse than they were in the Fall of 2024.