As Trump 2.0 continues, US consumers keep feeling worse.

We’ve seen consumer sentiment get worse in the country as we’ve gotten deeper into 2025 and Trump Administration 2.0, and we found out on Friday that consumers were at some of their lowest points yet, just as the Holiday shopping season was set to start up.

US consumer sentiment deteriorated slightly in November as Americans fretted about high prices, weaker incomes, and mounting layoffs, nearing record lows.

That’s according to the University of Michigan’s final reading of its survey of consumers. Preliminary data released earlier this month showed plunging sentiment for November, with overall sentiment hitting 50.3 amid concerns about the effect of the government shutdown on the economy. Sentiment improved a bit after the shutdown ended Nov. 12, reaching a level of 51 — lower than October’s 53.6 and down 29% from one year ago….

What’s more, 69% of consumers now expect unemployment to rise in the year ahead, more than double the rate from this time last year. The perceived probability of losing one’s job is also worse this month and at its highest level since 2020, according to Joanne Hsu, the director of the survey of consumers.

Young people are feeling especially dire. For Americans aged 18 to 34, expectations for losing one’s job in the next five years hit the highest level since 2012.

Remember last year, when low-info voters thought "businessman Trump" would get us back to the economy of 2019? Right now, I think a lot of those people would accept going back to the economy of 2024 at this point.

But we also saw a September jobs number on Thursday that showed surprising growth, and inflation continues to run at around 3%. So while consumer sentiment in the country is awful, Fed officials are clearly cross-pressured when it comes to deciding whether they should contiunue to cut interest rates. Which brings added attention to any hints a Fed official may give on next month's meeting, such as we saw on Friday.

Odds for another interest rate cut jumped Friday after New York Fed president John Williams signaled he could support a cut when the central bank meets in December.

“I still see room for a further adjustment in the near term to the target range for the federal funds rate to move the stance of policy closer to the range of neutral,” Williams said in a speech in Chile.

Though he still sees room to cut, Williams said he believes tariffs have temporarily stalled progress toward the Fed’s 2% inflation goal. He estimates tariffs are contributing a half a percentage point to three-quarters of a percentage point to inflation. He expects that inflation will come back down over the next year.

Williams' comments carry added weight because he is the vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee and one of what’s unofficially known as the “troika,” the group of leaders at the Fed, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell and vice chair Philip Jefferson.

And after a sizable drop in the markets over the previous 10 days, that was all Wall Street traders needed to hear in order to buy back in on Friday.

US equities had perked up early Friday after the New York Fed president John Williams said he sees room for a cut in the "near term." That led rate-cut bets for the Fed's next meeting to spike, with traders pricing in 75% odds of a December cut, up from around 40% on Thursday. Williams' remarks come amid evidence of a deeply divided Fed heading into its final meeting of 2025.

While stocks have seesawed, cryptocurrencies are feeling even greater heat — signs that the risk-off mood still haunts markets. Bitcoin sank on Friday to trade as low as $82,000, deepening a slide from record-high levels just more than a month ago. It is now heading for its worst month since the crypto collapse of 2022.

Doesn’t that sum things up well? That the only way for the stock market to go up is to be either gamble on unfulfilled projections of AI growth or hopes that the economy is bad enough that rate cuts continue? Not really what you want in the real world.

We still have yet to have information regarding overall retail sales for the US in September and October, which would indicate whether that negative consumer sentiment has translated into lower consumer activity. But it sure seems like there are plenty of headwinds in people’s minds and in their pocketbooks to keep Q4 from having much (if any) growth, and that’s before the large amount of announced layoffs start to translate into lost jobs and incomes.

Jobs data is back! At least thru September

After last week’s end of the federal government’s shutdown, we are starting to see some of the economic reports that have been long-delayed. The biggest of which so far was released (today), showing what happened to the US jobs market two months ago.

The US economy added 119,000 positions in September, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Thursday, an unexpected boost to the labor market that has lately shown signs of a possible slowdown.

Wall Street economists expected a gain of around 50,000 positions, according to data from Bloomberg. While the September number beat economists’ expectations, revisions to prior months’ data showed August’s payrolls lost 4,000 jobs, compared to the previously reported gain of 22,000. July also showed a slightly smaller boost of 72,000 positions, instead of 79,000.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, crept up to 4.4% in September, the highest level since October 2021, slightly exceeding August’s level of 4.3% and above the rate of 4.1% seen a year ago. The number of unemployed people grew slightly in September, reaching 7.6 million from August’s count of 7.4 million.

That’s surprising payroll growth, given that ADP had earlier reported a loss of 32,000 private sector jobs in September (later revised to a loss of 29,000).

I looked into the full jobs report, and I’ll note that 18,000 of the 119,000 jobs added were due to higher-than-normal hiring in education for state and local public schools, as well as private schools. And a lot of the rest of the 101,000 jobs were due to lower-than-normal seasonal layoffs in positions like construction contractors, retail trade, and leisure/hospitality. That may well reflect the fact that the payroll survey took place in the week after Labor Day, which may as well still be Summer these days. Let’s see if those “gains” get a snapback with the cooling weather of the next 2 months.

For the other stats, wages growth was “bleh”, at 0.246% overall and 0.254% for non-supervisory workers. Both failed to keep up with the 0.3% increase in inflation for September, which would mean a loss in real average hourly earnings for the 4th time in the 6 months measured after March, and a failure to gain for the 7th time in the 10 months measured since Trump was elected in November. Not good.

The unemployment rate rose for the “good reason”, with increases in labor force (+470,000), employment (+251,000) and unemployed (+219,000), so not a major alarm from that standpoint. But I’ll also add that the number of long-term unemployed continued to rise.

Which indicates to me that Americans who are being laid off are less likely to be quickly hired elsewhere. And that makes sense when you look the first release of unemployment claims information since the shutdown ended.

If you only went by the topline, it seemed to indicate things were still OK in mid-November.

In the week ending November 15, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 220,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's level. The 4-week moving average was 224,250, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week's average.

But the increase in long-term unemployment reverberated in the UI claims report, as the number of Americans on unemployment hit a 4-year high.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.3 percent for the week ending November 8, unchanged from the previous week's rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending November 8 was 1,974,000, an increase of 28,000 from the previous week's level. This is the highest level for insured unemployment since November 6, 2021 when it was 2,041,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,960,250, an increase of 6,750 from the previous week's average. This is the highest level for this average since November 20, 2021 when it was 2,004,250.

In addition, more federal employees were filing unemployment claims in October and early November due to the shutdown and Trump Administration layoffs that were done in response.

With over 34,400 additional federal employee claims vs last year, then combine with the seasonally-adjusted 1,974,000 figure of state claims (which do not count the federal employee claims), and we have exceeded 2 million continuing unemployment claims for the first time in 4 years.

Put it together, and you see a jobs market that was inconsistent but still growing in early September, while things seemed to be a bit worse 2 months later. We won’t see the October jobs numbers, since the government was shut down for the entire month, so we won’t see the 1-month effect of the 100,000+ federal employees that took part in the DOGE-related deferred resignation program, which took effect on September 30.

Those resignations won’t all show up in the unemployment claims info (although it appears some did), but we can look at November’s figures that come out next month, and get a good gauge of what effect that has had on the US jobs market overall. And I’d be surprised if unemployment isn’t higher in that November report, which would put us at the highest non-COVID/aftermath level since early 2017.

As more of these data points get released, it seems like things won’t show a crash as much as a slowdown in the economy where many areas are at or near recession, and Americans generally aren’t able to keep up with rising costs. We still haven’t seen how the consumer performed overall in September and October, other than anecdotal data from companies on their earnings calls, and that’ll be another indicator of whether things are just slower than what was going on this Summer, or if we are about to tip over into an outright decline.

Trump admits failure on some tariffs, and still BSing about the money they've raised

Oh, so tariffs aren’t really working out?

President Donald Trump is slated to sign an order on Friday reducing tariffs on beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, according to a White House official, a move aimed at lowering costs on groceries as the administration faces pressure from voters to cut prices on everyday goods.

The exemptions would reduce trade levies on the commodities, which can’t be produced in the US in sufficient quantity to meet domestic demand. The exact scope of the tariff reduction, how many total goods are included and how widely it would apply, were not immediately clear.

The move comes as Trump has pivoted to focusing on affordability measures as voters are growing increasingly wary of the economy under his leadership. It is also a tacit acknowledgment that the president’s tariff policies have added to price pressures on US consumers.

The tariffs on some of these products were always stupid, because in some of these cases, the product was not being made in America and could not be made in America. So there was no industry to protect, as Dem Congresswoman Madeline Dean memorably pointed this out in June to Trump's Commerce Secretary,

And dropping the tariffs on higher-priced tomatoes and beef isn’t going to make the farmers of those products happy, as they were reaping the benefits of higher prices. That’s especially the case with beef, as it accompanies a Trump scheme to increase imports of Argentinian beef to bail out his buddy Javier Milei, and both moves would lower the prices that US ranchers are going to get.

On Oct. 29, 14 House Republicans — led by House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Trade Subcommittee Chair Adrian Smith, R-Neb. — protested the move in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, calling for more clarity on the deal and demanding “equivalent market access for U.S. beef exports.”

“On average, Argentina exports over $200 million of beef annually to the U.S. while purchasing less than $2 million of U.S. beef in return,” the letter read, calling for “long-term fairness” in any beef deal with Argentina. “We encourage the Administration to ensure that any adjustments to Argentina’s tariff-rate quota or inspection regime be contingent on verified equivalency and reciprocal market access for American beef.”

Smith also joined the entire federal delegation from Nebraska in roundly condemning the deal. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., sought “clarity” for her “deep concerns” about the beef plan. “If the goal is addressing beef prices at the grocery store, this isn’t the way. Right now, government intervention in the beef market will hurt our cattle ranchers,” she wrote on X. “Nebraska’s ranchers cannot afford to have the rug pulled out from under them when they’re just getting ahead or simply breaking even.”

Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., said the deal would “undermine domestic producers,” and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., called the concerns of ranchers “justifiable.” Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., called on Trump to use “market-based solutions” to rising beef costs.

The point from Sen. Fischer is worth tracking, as there may be a couple of months where both producers and consumers are losing out, as the farmers see an immediate dropoff in the prices they get for their beef, but consumers still are paying the higher prices at the store for another month or two.

And let me also point out that TrumpWorld constantly BS’s about how much money is coming in from the tariffs. While it is certainly a lot more than what was being collected in the first 3 months of the year, it also isn’t close to the “trillions” of dollars that Trump claims.

Because of the federal government shutdown, they haven’t released October’s tariff revenue yet, but let’s assume that the $29.7 billion in September holds for the next 3 months. That's about $21 billion more than what was coming in per month with tariffs before April. Shoot that $21 billion a month for 12 months, and it's just over $250 billion a year.

Now let’s use Dean Baker’s estimation of how any type of “tariff rebate” might work, and how many people that would go to, and what it would do to our federal deficit. Baker estimates the revenue from Trump's tariffs to be $270 billion a year, but the point is basically the same.

The latest example is the $2,000 tariff dividend check that Trump is promising us. The arithmetic here is about as simple as it gets. We have roughly 340 million people in the country. Let’s say 10 percent don’t get the check because they meet Trump’s category of “high-income.”

That leaves over 300 million people getting Trump’s $2,000 checks. That comes to more than $600 billion. Trump’s tariffs are raising around $270 billion. That means we will be paying out $330 billion more in Trump tariff dividend checks than he is raising in tariff revenue. That is adding $330 billion to the deficit — this coming from the same guy who is making an obsession of paying down our national debt.

And just to be clear, we were already looking at a budget deficit for 2026 of $1.8 trillion. If we add $330 billion, the deficit for the fiscal year will be $2.1 trillion. To put this in simple language that even a reporter for a major national news outlet can understand, Trump is proposing to add $2.1 trillion to the debt in 2026; he is not paying it down. I acknowledge not being a deficit hawk and am not terrified by a deficit of this size, which is roughly 7 percent of GDP. But I suspect most of the politicians in Washington are, and certainly anyone who thinks we need to be paying down the debt should be screaming bloody murder.

So if we used a dollar-for-dollar rebate, the most Trump and co. might be able to cook up would be a little over $800 per person. It also would blow up the often-repeated Trump line that what’s in Tax Scam 2.0 can be offset by tariff revenue, since it would be getting rebated.

And what's being rebated would be the cost of what Americans have already paid for, with no increase in manufacturing jobs to show for that protection. In fact, Trump/GOP cut Biden-era assistance that was intended to encourage growth in the US manufacturing and usage of electrical vehicles as well as other types of US-based alternative energy projects).

Now some of these tariffs are getting rolled back, which will lessen the amount of any rebate, and is an admission of the foolishness of some of these decisions. So Trump/GOP should get no credit if we see the rate of inflation level off from the higher levels that we are currently paying for.

So let me get this straight: The President’s plan to lower prices is to roll back some of his own tariffs?

— Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (@warnock.senate.gov) November 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM

Bottom line - the old man in the White House and the lackeys around him don't have a clue, and while I have numbers and arguments in this post to back that up, "these guys don't have a clue" is the real story. And the failures and stupid disruptions that have resulted over the last 8 months generate from that point.

More places get wheel taxes in Wis, but maybe there's a better way to fix the roads

Although it’s not as rapid an increase as we saw in the 2010s, the Wisconsin Policy Forum noted that wheel taxes in Wisconsin continue to go up in the mid-2020s.

Statewide revenues from local option vehicle registration fees – commonly called wheel taxes — totaled more than $70 million in fiscal year 2025. This marks a dramatic increase from a decade ago, when such fees raised less than $10 million for local governments throughout Wisconsin.

These revenues underwent a very rapid period of growth across the state from 2015 through 2021, during which time the number of municipalities, towns, and counties with wheel taxes more than tripled. After 2021, total statewide revenue growth from wheel taxes began to slow considerably.

But then in fiscal year 2025, total statewide wheel tax revenues increased 12%, their largest annual increase since 2019. This is due in part to the fact that more communities have adopted them, as shown in Figure 1. Large cities that recently adopted wheel taxes include Eau Claire, Fitchburg, Oshkosh, Sun Prairie, and Wauwatosa.

We are now at a point that nearly half of Wisconsin's population lives in a community that has a wheel tax, compared to less than 1 in 6 a decade ago.

I will add that the City of Milwaukee was allowed to put in a 2% sales tax in 2023 to add to its revenue-generating abilities, unlike the vast majority of communities in Wisconsin. But most of those Milwaukee sales tax funds can only be used to shore up the City’s pension funds or pay for police staffing (see page 3 of this report for that information).

As a result, Milwaukee has had to turn to wheel taxes as a source of funding for road repairs. And with those local taxes being required by state law to be a flat fee regardless of the type of vehicle or light truck, the Policy Forum notes that keeping the wheel tax at the same amount means that more of Milwaukee’s property tax and other revenues have to be tapped for the rising cost to fix roads.

A look at how Milwaukee’s wheel tax revenue has changed relative to inflation illustrates how the buying power of these dollars recently has eroded. In fiscal year 2022, just after increasing its wheel tax, Milwaukee collected a total of $10.2 million in inflation-adjusted revenues. By 2025, those revenues had eroded to $9.2 million on an inflation-adjusted basis.

With this dynamic at play — and other local revenue options tightly constrained under state law — some communities that previously adopted wheel taxes are now considering raising them further. The city of Milwaukee first imposed its wheel tax in 2008, at $20, then increased it to $30 in 2021. Mayor Cavalier Johnson proposed increasing it in the 2026 budget, and the city’s Common Council ultimately adopted an $11 increase, bringing it to a total of $41.

And it’s not just Milwaukee that is dealing with this concern, as the Policy Forum notes that inflation-adjusted wheel taxes are actually lower than they were 4 years ago.

Relying on flat-fee wheel taxes doesn’t seem to be a sustainable or equitable way for municipalities to pay for transportation and transit costs in our state. While the increase in shared revenues has put off some of the strains for a couple of years, it’s also worth remembering that smaller communities and towns got much larger increases in those funds, while the cities and counties were somewhat left behind, despite being the communities whose local roads and streets are more likely to take on traffic from both residents and non-residents.

Seems like there needs to be some more reforms in how local governments in Wisconsin can raise funds. And the easiest one to me is a variation of something Governor Evers wanted to do in the most recent budget.

Allow counties, other than Milwaukee County, to impose an additional sales tax of up to 0.5 percent and allow municipalities with populations over 30,000, other than the city of Milwaukee, to impose a sales tax of up to 0.5 percent to diversify local revenue sources and better empower local governments to fund police and fire protection, transit, roads, and other important services, if approved by local referendum. This includes the flexibility to allow counties to set their tax rates in 0.1 percent increments from 0.1 to 1.0 percent. Municipalities would also have the flexibility to set their rates in 0.1 percent increments from 0.1 to 0.5 percent.

But the GOP Legislature didn’t go for that, so communities that range in population from Madison to Manitowoc are constrained when it comes to paying for roads and other needs. Which makes it no wonder why those communities are the most likely to turn to wheel taxes on their residents to make up the difference.

So why not allow cities, villages and counties that have a vehicle registration fee to levy a local sales tax of up to 0.25%, with a portion of those sales taxes being designated for the funds that would be raised from those registration fees? In return, those communities would have to end their wheel taxes. I’d then throw in an additional provision where all Wisconsin communities are allowed to levy an additional sales tax of 0.25%, with ½ of those funds used to limit property taxes on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

It also would pass off some of the taxes to pay for local roads and services from community residents to out-of-towners who go to those communities to shop, eat, and visit. That seems like a fairer situation, and since sales taxes are connected to the prices of what is taxed, it also doesn't leave the communities as susceptible to falling behind if inflation picks up.

Gas and oil prices going lower, and likely to stay low in 2026.

Even though we’ve seen gas prices ride a bit of a roller coaster in recent weeks because of outages at refineries and other one-off disruptions, the overall picture is that gas and oil prices are on the way down.

Oil dropped by the most in a month as a key market gauge flashed weakness and OPEC said global crude supplies surpassed demand sooner than anticipated.

West Texas Intermediate fell more than 3%, wiping out three sessions of gains. The US benchmark’s nearest timespread briefly traded in a so-called bearish contango structure — which means current oil prices are cheaper than contracts for delivery further out — for the first time since February, a fresh sign of the widely anticipated supply glut.

OPEC revised estimates for global oil markets to a third-quarter surfeit from a deficit as US production exceeded expectations and the group itself accelerated output. Worldwide oil supplies exceeded demand by 500,000 barrels a day during the period, the group said.

Good news at the pump, but not so good if you’re one of those US oil producers, because they aren’t going to be getting profits with oil sitting below $59.

At the current price of oil, shale will stagnate or start to decline, industry executives say, while shale producers look to do more with less by raising efficiency in production and capital allocation.

“Fundamentally, the short-term market is a little bearish,” Patrick Pouyanne, the chief executive of supermajor TotalEnergies, said at the Energy Intelligence forum last month.

“There is a point at $60 per barrel where we'll see the shale industry beginning to slow down,” Pouyanne said on the sidelines of the forum. ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO Ryan Lance said that “At $60-$65 a barrel WTI oil prices, the US is probably plateau-ish.”…

“But if prices stay at $60 or go into the $50s, you probably are plateauing or slightly declining,” the executive added.

And the Energy Information Administration said (on Wednesday) that oil and gas prices would continue to go down next year, as part of their Short Term Energy Outlook.

Global oil prices. We expect global oil inventories to continue to rise through 2026, putting downward pressure on oil prices in the coming months. We forecast the Brent crude oil price will fall to an average of $54 per barrel (b) in the first quarter of 2026 (1Q26) and average $55/b for all of next year. Although we continue to expect crude oil prices to fall in the coming months, our Brent forecast for 2026 is $3/b higher than in last month’s outlook, largely as a result of updated assumptions about inventory builds in China and sanctions on Russia.

U.S. gasoline and diesel prices. Our forecast assumes lower crude oil prices, the largest component of retail prices, will contribute to lower retail gasoline and diesel prices throughout the forecast period. We expect gasoline prices to fall below $3.00 per gal (gal) on average in 2026, down 10% from 2024, and diesel prices to fall to $3.50/gal in 2026, down 7% from 2024.

But if you heat your home with gas, you’re going to see prices rise significantly this Winter, and go up even more next year.

Natural gas prices. The Henry Hub natural gas spot price in our forecast rises to an average of almost $3.90 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) this winter (November–March) following seasonal patterns of prices rising during the winter alongside increased space heating demand. We expect prices to average $4.00/MMBtu in 2026, 16% higher than in 2025, primarily due to increased liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports amid flat production growth.

Let’s also remember a main reason gas and oil prices have gotten so low is that Americans don’t use nearly as much gas as they used to, as usage continues to be well below pre-COVID levels.

The usage staying low is even more noteworthy because gas prices are significantly lower than they were 2 and 3 years ago.

It's not below $2 a gallon as our senior President likes to dementedly ramble about, but those lower gas prices are something that can keep overall inflation from getting too high.

The ironic part is that prices for oil are likely to stay so low that Trump/GOP's "drill, baby, drill" deregulation won't likely translate into more drilling over the next year. Because it's not going to be worth it for oil companies to do so.

Trump and Fitz desperately try to change the blame for their GOP idiocy on health care

Republicans continue to flail in the wake of huge jumps in out-of-pocket costs for Obamacare insurance, and their stupefying refusal to restore the subisidies that would cut the amount that everyday Americans would pay for that insurance.

So now their latest strategy is to....blame insurance companies?

An unserious man

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— Daniel A Collier, PhD (@dcollier74.bsky.social) November 8, 2025 at 9:55 AM

So instead of making insurance companies compete at scale and have consumers choose what is best for them, Trump wants to give Americans a VOUCHER to go to insurance companies, and not have any baseline services required or any controls on the costs of those insurance policies?

We already tried this idea, with Paul Ryan in the 2010s.

This VOUCHERcare idea from Trump sounds familiar. Oh yeah! Here it is! www.americanprogress.org/article/ryan... @pamherd.bsky.social @bbkogan.bsky.social

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— jakemadtown.bsky.social (@jakemadtown.bsky.social) November 8, 2025 at 10:39 AM

Ryan's plan was so flawed and ridiculous that it was laughed out of the room and never brought up for a vote because the idea was so toxic.

We got a similar kind of deflection from the Koched-up insurrectionist piece of human garbage known as Wisconsin Congressman Scott Fitzgerald, who shrugs and says ending the tax credits really didn't raise premiums that much anyway.

According to the Paragon Health Institute, the end of those temporary subsidies accounts for only 3-4% of projected premium increases for a typical Obamacare plan in 2026, with most of the increases being driven by other factors like the lingering effects of inflation and new innovative but expensive drugs and technology. Even without the enhanced COVID-era subsidies, the federal government will still cover more than 80% of premiums for most enrollees through the regular subsidies.

It's cute to see Fitzgerald use a study from the Paragon Institute as evidence that dumping the tax credits aren't a reason for the premium hikes, because the Paragon Institute is a Koched-up RW front group whose only goal is to wreck Obamacare any way they can.

After those alternate facts from Troll Scotty, we continue with Rep. Fitzgerald's flop-sweaty justifications.

It's true that some enrollees with incomes just above four times the federal poverty level will see higher costs because they lose eligibility for premium subsidies. But that group is small, only about 7% of all Exchange enrollees according to KFF. The Urban Institute estimates the uninsured rate for these families would rise by only 5%, because many can access employer coverage or are willing to pay the full premium.

Most enrollees, those with incomes under 250% of the federal poverty level who receive the largest subsidies and make up about three-quarters of all Exchange enrollees would see premiums rise by only around $62.50 per month, according to the Urban Institute. This is far from the “doubling” scare the Democrats are pushing.

In addition to the fact that there have been numerous reports around the state and country about people paying more than double for their insurance vs what they're paying now, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 38% of Wisconsinites that receive insurance through the exchanges have incomes about 250% of the poverty line, or more than 121,000 of those insured. That's not 25% Fitz, and it is not an insignificant number of people.

Let's also go back to the Congressional Budget Office's estimates and see what they had to say about what the lack of tax credits are doing to people's costs.

CBO also estimates that gross premiums for benchmark plans in the marketplaces would be 7.6 percent lower, on average, in each year from 2026 to 2035, relative to baseline projections. (The premium estimates reflect the amount before the tax credit is applied.) The estimated decline in benchmark premiums is the result of the expectation that people enrolling in the marketplaces would be healthier on average if the expanded premium tax credit were extended.

That's basically double the increase what Fitzgerald's stink tank claims, and Fitzgerald also neglects to mention that the higher premiums also mean higher taxpayer costs for those who still are eligible for the tax credits.

In addition, employer-based insurance will likely become more expensive (and likely has, if you checked your open enrollment info), as some people decide to choose that over Obamacare, or go uninsured and have more expensive services when they use emergency rooms instead of regular check-ups. In both cases, those (often sicker or older) individuals can drive up overall costs for the insurance company, who then raise everyone else's premiums.

Fitzgerald also gives a zombie lie about Democrats wanting to give ACA coverage to illegal immigrants (this is both not true and disallowed under the ACA). And then he claims that the expansion of the tax credits that lowered costs for everyday Americans was a distortion, and that allowing them to expire is just the way things should work out. OK Scotty, you tell Wisconsinites whose out-of-pocket premium costs have doubled that it's just something they should suck up.

Somehow, the GOP thinks they can use the higher premiums caused by their negligence and arrogance as a reason to get of the Obamacare exchanges. And while I'm all about hating insurance companies, using that earned hatred to mess up the ACA seems like an idiotic strategy. As tens of millions of Americans have gotten insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, the ACA's favorability has continued to climb, to the point that it is liked by a nearly 2-1 margin.

Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress points out that there is a consistency with what Trump/GOP is doing here.

The new GOP talking point again premium tax credits is an argument against *all* demand-side assistance. Don’t help people buy health insurance because money flows to insurers? That’s also an argument against SNAP and WIC — dollars flow to grocery stores. Just an excuse to not help people.

— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) November 8, 2025 at 3:20 PM

This is what the Republicans want for the vast majority of Americans. To have us beholden to businesses who are able to limit the options consumers have, allowing a chosen few to dictate the costs and choices to the rest of us. In reality, if we are really concerned about unchecked power of insurance companies to raise premiums and get profits from government subsidies, there are two things yhay can be done.

1. Have a baseline government-run insurance policy that also appears on the Obamacare exchanges, which limits the rate of profit and overhead. Call it a public competition, or extra option, or something like that.

2. There's an even easier way to take soulless, corportate insurance companies out of the equation.

#MedicareForAll

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— Lara7CA (@laravp7.bsky.social) November 9, 2025 at 12:57 PM

Let's ask all Republicans on the Hill if they really want to deal with the remaining flaw of the Affordable Care Act - the fact that it still relies on private insurance companies to offer the health coverage and options that Americans need.

ADP says US gained private sector jobs in October. But overall picture is bad, and set to get worse

Without regular data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other government agencies, we have to look at other data for information on how the US jobs market looks. And we got a bit of news on Thursday that indicated things had taken a downward turn.

Last month was the worst October for layoff announcements since 2003 as companies slashed roles to save money, pared back pandemic-era hires, and planned ahead for artificial intelligence, according to the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Employers announced 153,074 cuts last month, compared to 55,597 cuts in October 2024. Last month’s figure was “the highest total for October in over 20 years, and the highest total for a single month in the fourth quarter since 2008,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a report Thursday.

Altogether, US firms announced the end of 1,099,500 positions through the first 10 months of this year, up 44% from the 761,358 cuts seen for the entirety of 2024. Technology businesses led private-sector layoffs.

“October’s pace of job cutting was much higher than average for the month,” Challenger said in a statement.

“Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic, but this comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes,” he continued. “Those laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market.”

That's not good at all, although I'll note that those are jobs ANNOUNCEMENTS, which means the actual job losses will come later, so we wouldn't be seeing that show up in unemployment claims or the unemployment rate for a few months.

The report on added layoffs came one day after some positive jobs news from one of the only other sources of jobs market news during the Federal government shutdown.

Private-sector job creation bounced back in October, according to a snapshot of the labor market that has become more closely watched in the absence of official federal jobs data.

Payroll processing company ADP on Wednesday estimated that private-sector businesses added an estimated 42,000 jobs last month, a swing into positive territory after back-to-back months of job losses.

While October marked a return to job growth, ADP’s chief economist cautioned that the pace of hiring is running far slower than earlier this year and far more concentrated in a few sectors….

The largest job gains were spread across industries such as trade, transportation and utilities (+47,000 jobs); education and health services (+26,000); and financial activities (+11,000), ADP reported.

Those posting the biggest job losses were information (17,000 jobs lost), professional and business services (15,000 jobs lost), and leisure and hospitality (6,000 jobs lost).

Yes, the 42,000 gain makes up for the losses in the previuous 2 months, but as you can see, 2025 has seen private job growth slow to near zero after increases in the previous 2 years.

What's worth mentioning along with ADP's small gain in private sector jobs in October is that if we had a regular jobs report tomorrow, we'd see the full effect of DOGE's deferred resignation program for federal employees. Between 100,000 and 150,000 workers chose to leave federal service, but were still receiving pay through the end of the Federal Fiscal Year on September 30, which means they would not show up as "unemployed" in the official numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics until October's report.

Put those public sector losses together with other reported job info, and UW-Madison's Menzie Chinn projects that October's jobs report would have shown a notable decline in payroll numbers, if we would have had a report coming out.

Maybe that's another reason Trump/GOP seems to be OK with doing nothing to end the shutdown. It doesn't just keep the Epstein files under wraps, it also has allowed for the last two months of subpar jobs reports to be hidden from the public as well.

Polls and politicians should adjust after last night, and know WisDems are in a good spot

Yesterday’s results in elections were a clear win for Democrats pretty much across the board. Yes, smaller sample size than a Congressional midterm or Presidential election, but it’s also not nothing, especially in the large margin of the Democratic wins in the places they won in.

It also brought me back to last month’s Marquette Law School Poll, which had an electorate set up this way.

That may seem lopsided, but it is not much different than what the adjusted exit polls indicated that Party ID was in Wisconsin for 2024’s election.

But an R+3 or R+4 electorate isn’t what we saw in Virginia and New Jersey yesterday, which showed a strong shift to Democrats. That matches up with a finding that Gallup had in July which showed a nationwide change in Party ID from R+4 to D+3 by this Summer.

And those surveys took place before the shutdown and hike in Obamacare premiums and ICE getting further out of control. All of which have seen Republicans sit on their hands and avoid doing anything about any of these unpopular things that they are 100% in ownership of. So I can’t think those Party ID numbers are any better now.

But let’s be charitable to the GOP and only turn Wisconsin’s electorate from R+4 to one evenly split between the 2 parties (call it 33.5% to 33.5%), with the same 25% of Independents and 8% of “Other/No preference” (which is lumped together as “Independents”. Then take the answers among those groups from the recent Marquette Poll. Start with Trump approval, which has the following crosstabs.

That pushes Trump’s approval-disapproval down around 44-54 from 46-53. It’s only a 3-point difference, but you also can’t say things haven’t changed from where Trump's approval was last year.

And if you’re a Republican in the Wisconsin Legislature, an even split between Dems and Republicans next November puts you in big trouble, because the voters of the state don't like what the GOPs have been doing while in control of both houses.

Now, you may remember that I had the same criticism about the GOP +5 tilt of Chuckly Franklin’s final pre-election poll in 2024, and it turned out that he correctly modeled the young bros and other casuals that would come out and ID as Republican or Independent.

But the polls in Virginia and New Jersey badly missed the shift to Dems in both Party ID and results last night (by 4 points in VA and 7 in NJ). It's also worth noting that Dems gained 9 and 7 points in yesterday’s Governor races in VA and NJ compared to Kamala Harris’ 6-point wins in each of those states last year.

Again, I’ll be conservative and give half that shift to Wisconsin (we may be different, but we’re not that different here), and that would translate to a 4-point move and a relatively comfortable win of more than 3% in 2026 for Dems at the top of the ticket here. So what did the map look like for Tony Evers’ 3.5% win from 2022 with the new districts in place? Let’s go to Dave’s Redistricting and find out.

Here’s the Congressional map.

See that Evers won District 3 (by 49.6-49.1)? Then add in the fact that GOP incumbent Derrick Van Orden beat Rebecca Cooke by 4.5% less than Trump beat Harris in District 3, and you gotta think Cooke is favored in a rematch. And Evers only lost District 1 by 0.2%, which means GOP Bryan Steil is in big trouble for re-election if he's strongly contested in a similar type of year.

And if the shift is a VA-NJ-level of 7-9%? Coffee Boy Steil is likely gone unless he is somehow thought of as different as Trump and the other GOPs in DC - which would be quite a trick when he chairs the powerful House Administration Committee and is standing next to Mike Johnson and other House GOP Leaders when they are saying garbage like this about peaceful No Kings participants.

Emmer: "This is about one thing and one thing alone -- to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold a hate America rally in DC next week."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 10, 2025 at 9:25 AM

Yeah, Steil ain't going to be able to separate himself from them.

And just like how Virginia Democrats got a near-supermajority in their lower house during last night's elections, you'd have to think Dems would be set to win further down the ticket if they're winning at the top. So let's look at how Evers did in his 3.5% victory in the State Senate districts, and keep in mind that only odd-numbered districts are up in 2026.

That means Dems should be favored in districts 5, 17, and 21, which are currently held by Republicans. If Dems flip those 3, they run the Senate 18-15.

And here’s the State Assembly.

. That one blue dot on the other side of the vertical line means that Evers won 50 of the state's 99 districts as he was winning the state by 3.5%

Considering the Democratic overperformance basically everywhere last night, you have to think the potential of a Democratic trifecta in Wisconsin in 2026 has become just a bit more likely.

— Dan Shafer (@danshafer.bsky.social) November 5, 2025 at 10:01 AM

It's definitely in play.

Obviously a lot can and will happen in the next year, so don’t assume the Dems have an easy glide into power for 2026. But winning the whole enchilada sure seems possible, along with a pickup of at least 1-2 seats in the US House. And if I was an elected Republican in Madison or DC, I’d definitely look for ways not to be a feckless Trumper in the coming months.

Trump/GOPs screwing up, screwing around on SNAP, and benefits won't be out for a while

Just wanted to give a little accumulation of information on the SNAP situation.

First of all, it's indisputable that the law says the Trump Administration has to release these funds for SNAP, and that the money has been set aside. Bobby Kogan from the Center for American Progress, who knows a helluva lot more about budget stuff than I do, shows us the actual words on the paper.

Again, here's the *entire* text for the SNAP contingency fund. It says it's for when you need it for carry out program operations. It doesn't say "it's for when there's some money but not enough." Give me a fucking break. It can obviously be used on benefits during a shutdown.

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— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) October 31, 2025 at 11:46 AM

See that? There are extra funds set aside in case there aren't funds allocated to SNAP short-term, and they are good through September 30 of next year. The money is there.

Kogan also does a good rundown of the timeline and the confusing and often contradictory messages that the Trump Admin were sending out in relation to SNAP.

-Sep 30: USDA releases guidance saying they can use contingency fund -Oct 10: USDA tells states to prepare for lapse -Oct 23: USDA deletes guidance saying they can use contingency fund -Oct 24: USDA says it can’t use contingency fund -Oct 31: Courts tell USDA to release funds -Nov 1: no funds go out

— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) November 3, 2025 at 8:31 AM

Courts required the Trump Admin to send some of the contingency funds for SNAP. Well, at least some of it.

For the past two days, the administration has said in public statements and court filings that it will at least partially fund the program this month after US District Judge John McConnell’s ruling that the agencies should tap emergency funds to pay for food stamps…

One day earlier, the Justice Department said in a court filing the administration was working “diligently” to comply with a ruling last week from McConnell, a Rhode Island-based judge, requiring officials to at least partially fund SNAP.

The Agriculture Department, which administers the program, planned to “deplete” $4.65 billion in contingency money and provide recipients with 50% of the amount eligible households normally receive in November, the filing said. It also warned that recalculating benefits would be time-consuming.

But that means states and other administrators of SNAP benefits need to adjust how much each recipient gets, and that will mean that even the partial benefits for November will not be able to be used this month. This includes the SNAP recipients in Wisconsin.

Department of Health Services officials said because food stamp recipients' benefits will be reduced due to the partial funding, the state must wait for guidance from the Trump administration on how to move forward and then recalculate more than 367,000 households' benefits because the amount is lower than normal. That will take "weeks instead of days," the officials said….

If the Trump administration had fully funded the program, state government officials across the country would not have needed to overhaul their systems and benefits would have been delivered more quickly, according to Patrick Penn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official who oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

"Providing the full month of benefits would not have created the same unique challenges and delays," the Wisconsin officials wrote in an email to reporters.

Even worse, the Journal-Sentinel article says that the Trump Administration thought about moving money from school meal subsidies to pay for the full month of SNAP benefits. Then, they realized that would be even worse to shove the burdens onto school districts and school kids, and they backed off.

"USDA has determined that creating a shortfall in Child Nutrition Program funds to fund one month of SNAP benefits is an unacceptable risk, even considering the procedural difficulties with delivering a partial November SNAP payment, because shifting $4 billion dollars to America’s SNAP population merely shifts the problem to millions of America’s low income children that receive their meals at school," Penn wrote.

It’s yet another self-inflicted wound from the dimwits in the White House, as a conscious choice to not use these funds that were set aside by law.

I can't think Trump/GOP is winning on this, but they figured Dems would cave as the Trumpers pointed the gun at Americans that need SNAP. But Trump/GOP have been wrong on their calculus and their tactics throughout this shutdown, and it's why basically anyone that's not a MAGAt living in BubbleWorld is putting the blame on Republicans. We will see if some of that blame bears out in the elections that we have tonight.

Manufacturing slump continues in October

We don’t get much economic data these days with the government still shut down, so when any bit of information comes out from other places, it’s grabbed onto more. And the information from an index of US manufacturing activity shows that things were going mostly the same way that they were before the shutdown.

The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.

“The Manufacturing PMI® registered 48.7 percent in October, a 0.4-percentage point decrease compared to the reading of 49.1 percent recorded in September. The overall economy continued in expansion for the 66th month after one month of contraction in April 2020. (A Manufacturing PMI® above 42.3 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy.) The New Orders Index contracted for the second month in October following one month of growth; the figure of 49.4 percent is 0.5 percentage point higher than the 48.9 percent recorded in September. The October reading of the Production Index (48.2 percent) is 2.8 percentage points lower than September’s figure of 51 percent. The Prices Index remained in expansion (or ‘increasing’ territory), registering 58 percent, down 3.9 percentage points compared to the reading of 61.9 percent reported in September. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 47.9 percent, up 1.7 percentage points compared to the 46.2 percent recorded in September. The Employment Index registered 46 percent, up 0.7 percentage point from September’s figure of 45.3 percent….

“The New Export Orders Index reading of 44.5 percent is 1.5 percentage points higher than the reading of 43 percent registered in September. The Imports Index registered 45.4 percent, 0.7 percentage point higher than September’s reading of 44.7 percent.”

Now, if you didn’t know better, you’d say this indicates improvements from September. But that’s not true. It meant manufacturing activity kept declining in October and prices kept going up, just not as badly as they were in September.

The ISM report goes on to say that some sectors had significant declines last month.

“Looking at the manufacturing economy, 58 percent of the sector’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracted in October, down from 67 percent in September, however; the percent of GDP in strong contraction (registering a composite PMI® of 45 percent or lower), is at 41 percent, up 13 percent from September. The share of sector GDP with a PMI® at or below 45 percent is a good metric to gauge overall manufacturing weakness. Of the six largest manufacturing industries, only two (Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; and Transportation Equipment) expanded in October,” says Spence.

And “strong contraction” is when you are more likely to see sizable job losses, vs muddling through some doldrums.

While it's nice to put the numbers to things, I think this rundown at the top of the ISM report sums it well.

So should I assume manufacturing was one of the sectors the Treasury Secretary was talking about this weekend?

TAPPER: Do you agree that the US is at risk of a recession? BESSENT: I believe we are in a transition period here. I think we're in good shape, but there are sectors of the economy that are in recession

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) November 2, 2025 at 8:19 AM

WisGOPs choosing vouchers over public schools + less lottery playing = higher property taxes in Wis

2 weeks ago, the Department of Public Instruction released their General Aid payments for 2025-26, and it showed that nearly 3/4 of Wisconsin districts will be dealing with less General Aid from the state for this school year.

When combined with Governor Evers’ creative veto from 2023 that permitted increased resources for K-12 Wisconsin districts, that means those extra funds would have to come in the form of higher property taxes for those 3/4 of school districts in this year.

This is where I remind you that Evers wanted to pay for those extra K-12 resources with added state aids and related measures in his 2025-27 state budget, which the Legislative Fiscal Bureau said at the time would have kept property taxes back near last year’s levels.

But the WisGOPs in the Legislature didn’t go along with those ideas, and added $0 in General Aids for each of the upcoming 2 years. So the Legislative Fiscal Bureau updated those estimates after the budget was signed, and said the WisGOP (in)action on the budget raised gross school property taxes by $354.0 million for this year, and overall property taxes would rise by an additional $164 on the median-priced Wisconsin home for this year, and another $116 in December 2026.

Bad enough, but guess what state payments did get increased in our state budget! The money going to private (and often religious) voucher schools. As the LFB notes in its summary of K-12 education funding:

Under the [budget], the per pupil payment for K-8 pupils is estimated to increase from $10,237 in 2024-25 to $10,877 in 2025-26 and $11,305 in 2026-27, and the per pupil payment for 9-12 pupils is estimated to increase from $12,731 in 2024-25 to $13,371 in 2025-26 and $13,799 in 2026-27.

Milwaukee students receiving vouchers are entirely state funded, but vouchers for kids in all other parts of Wisconsin are paid for in a different way – by cutting the funding for the public school district where the kid lives in. Even if the kid never attended a day of public schools.

If you check out DPI’s rundown, you’ll see that $394.5 million is being taken away from Wisconsin’s public schools to pay for these vouchers this year.

And outside of Milwaukee, this ends up raising the property taxes of Wisconsinites because the public schools are allowed to do that in order to make up for the state funds being taken away from the district the voucher kid lives in. And given that the amount of students given vouchers and the amount of voucher payments continue to rise, this keeps adding to the property tax burden.

Another reason Wisconsinites are likely to face rising property tax bills is that the state’s lottery tax credit is going to be less for this year, as the Legislative Fiscal Bureau recently confirmed.

In 2025(26), with available proceeds of $293,929,700, an estimated average tax credit of $190 would be extended to eligible properties with values in excess of the credit base value, to be established by DOR prior to November 20 of each year. In 2024(25), the corresponding average tax credit was $207, based on the amount certified by the Committee in October, 2024. The decline in the estimated average credit is attributable to a projected decrease in ticket sales in 2025-26 of $21.6 million, compared to 2024-25. Actual lottery sales can vary from estimates, especially in the case of jackpot games like Powerball and Mega Millions, which are strongly driven by the size and number of high jackpots.

This now means that Wisconsin's lottery credit has declined in 3 of the last 4 years.

The LFB went on to explain that part of the reason for the lower reductions in property taxes is that people haven’t been spending on lottery tickets like they were 5 years ago. Even with blips such as September’s $1.8 billion Powerball jackpot that led to a rush of sales, the Fiscal Bureau thinks that declining trend will continue.

Lottery ticket sales were generally higher, both in Wisconsin and nationwide, through the COVID-19 pandemic and in the years since. Higher advertised jackpots for games such as Mega Millions and Powerball also contributed to increased revenues during this period. However, despite remaining high compared to pre-pandemic years, ticket sales have generally decreased since 2022- 23. Sales of scratch tickets in particular are expected to decrease by 5% in 2025-26, compared to 2024-25 sales. Moreover, high jackpots, and the associated increases in sales, did not occur at the same rate in 2024-25 as in previous years. The revised estimate of lottery sales projects that sales of lotto (jackpot) tickets will increase in 2025-26 by approximately 3.4%, compared to sales of these tickets 2024-25. However, much of this growth is driven by actual sales of Powerball tickets resulting from a large jackpot in early 2025-26. Sales of other lotto games are expected to decrease slightly in 2025-26. In particular, the price of a single play Mega Millions ticket increased from $2 to $5 in April, 2025, which has initially softened demand for those tickets. Finally, slower growth in real personal income, as well as increased competition from online sports gambling and illegal and gray market gaming, are expected to affect demand for lottery tickets.

That trend sure makes me wonder if tying lottery proceeds to property tax reductions is the best use of these funds. Especially when you look at how lottery proceeds are used in other states, where it often goes to K-12 education (including in Wisconsin neighbors Illinois and Michigan), veterans assistance (including Illinois and Iowa), and to add resources and/or cut taxes that go to the state’s general fund (including Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota).

And perhaps using lottery proceeds for K-12 education and/or the state general fund would be a way to take pressure off of both property taxes and state aids for funding Wisconsin schools. Because what’s happening today under the funneling of state funds to vouchers and the lessening amount of lottery credits isn’t working when it comes to keeping property taxes down. And that’ll become especially apparent when many of us get our bills in the mail in just over a month.