COMMENTARY: Affordability is the real test for Congress in 2026

If one word will define the 2026 congressional agenda, it is “affordability.” In fact, Roll Call just classified it as a defining issue for Congress this year.

The challenge is that not every proposal marketed as “helping working families” actually would do so. Some look good on paper but would backfire in practice. As Congress debates how to bring costs down, it’s worth separating the policies that address root causes from those that would merely cap symptoms.

Here are some of the best, and worst, affordability ideas circulating in Washington.

For most families, housing is the biggest monthly bill, and the economics are pretty simple. When more people want to live somewhere than there are homes available, prices go up. No amount of subsidies or tax credits can outrun a supply shortage.

That’s why the most promising affordability proposals focus on the basics: easing zoning restrictions, speeding up permitting and making it legal to build more housing — often denser housing — in high-demand areas.

These ideas have proven to work. States and cities that have loosened building constraints are already seeing slower rent growth compared with heavily regulated markets.

Energy prices ripple through the entire economy. When energy is expensive, transportation, food, manufacturing and home heating all follow.

Policies that expand domestic energy production — across oil, gas, nuclear and next-generation technologies — remain one of the most effective affordability tools available to Congress. When the U.S. produces more energy at home, families pay less everywhere else.

In industry after industry, consumers are paying more because competition has quietly disappeared. Fewer airlines, fewer meat processors, fewer insurers, fewer banks.

Targeted antitrust enforcement that restores competition without punishing scale for its own sake can lower prices without new bureaucracy. When companies have to compete for customers again, affordability follows naturally.

This approach is slower than mandates, but far more durable.

Price caps are often sold as immediate relief, and that makes them politically tempting. History is consistent on what happens next: shortages, reduced access and unintended consequences for the people policymakers claim to protect.

This is especially true in credit markets. When lenders cannot price for risk, they don’t become charitable; they stop lending to higher-risk borrowers altogether.

The credit card rate cap that was recently proposed may reduce headline interest rates, but it would also push millions of Americans out of the formal credit system. The result would be less access rather than greater affordability.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., recently made this point rather articulately. “We all want to find ways to make things more affordable, but once you start talking about that, you also start talking about limiting the number of individuals that might be eligible for getting credit,” he said. “If you take that away because companies are not offering it, that could be a problem.”

If Congress wants to help consumers stuck in high-interest debt, there are far more effective tools than blunt caps. Clearer disclosures, easier balance transfers, stronger competition among lenders, and pathways to refinancing all reduce costs without shrinking access.

Market-based reforms don’t generate the same headlines as mandates, but they consistently outperform them over time.

Affordability will not be solved by a sweeping law or one clever cap. It will be solved by dozens of unglamorous decisions that expand supply, restore competition and reduce hidden cost drivers across the economy.

That requires policymakers to distinguish between ideas that sound compassionate and policies that work. It also requires openness to debate — testing proposals, discarding the ones that fail and refining those that don’t.

Voters don’t care who gets credit for the idea. They care whether their lives get better and their families prosper.

Good intentions won’t count for much. Congress will be judged on outcomes — and affordability will be the test of whether Washington was finally listening.

J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.