Guy Ciarrocchi: Democrats caused inflation. Now, they blame the GOP for the affordability crisis.

Affordability. The politically smart term to describe the real problems caused by inflation.

A year ago, January 2025. Buying a house cost too much. Mortgage rates were sky-high. Rent, too. Groceries and utilities prices soared. Filling up our cars was costing us as much as eating out.

Health insurance premiums rising — sometimes surpassing mortgage/rent payments. Worse, taxpayer funded Obamacare subsidies — to cover up the actual rates that insurance companies charge for coverage — were climbing higher. Most of us are paying twice: paying for our own insurance, with our taxes being used to subsidize insurance premiums for others.

Democrats spent 2021-2024 putting their passion for sprawling, more controlling government into overdrive — for “emergencies.” Yet, they put even more effort into downplaying the not-surprising resulting inflation.

The Biden/Harris administration and their allies in the legacy media kept throwing arguments at us to see if we’d buy them. They told us that inflation “was transitory;” caused by Putin, or “corporate greed.” Even trying to tell us that it didn’t exist — gaslighting us.

When gaslighting failed, they rammed through the falsely-named “Inflation Reduction Act.” It brought federal government “emergency” spending to double the cost of an entire federal budget, and was actually just the almost trillion dollar “Green New Deal,” — punishing oil, gas, and coal production. 

Spend trillions of taxpayer money. Drive us further into debt. Threaten energy production, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas needed for heat and electricity — and fertilizer for vegetables, fruit and cattle-feed — all sky-high.

I wonder what doing all of that causes!

Now, about our crushing healthcare costs. 

Obamacare is a colossal, demonstrable failure. The ironically named “Affordable Care Act” is the embodiment of the Left’s obsession with bigger, more powerful government — ideology trumping history, facts and reality. 

Healthcare is less affordable, caring, and patient-focused in 2026 then when Democrats rammed their bill through Congress in 2010. Worse, despite finger-wagging promises, we could not “keep our doctors.” Many doctors wouldn’t accept our new Obamacare and shifted to private-pay boutique practices rather than deal with the behemoth that had become health insurance — or just retired.

Obamacare forced everyone to buy insurance, including buying additional coverage that we were unlikely to use, and often didn’t want — like making people buy a Lexus, when most wanted a Toyota and many younger people would’ve been happy with a SmartCar. Obamacare made traditional group health plans illegal — plans organized by Chambers of Commerce or other business associations, allowing small business, and those self-employed to buy together to help lower costs. 

Knowing these mandates would raise costs for individuals, farmers, families and businesses, Democrats “incentivized” people to buy government-managed Obamacare by offering taxpayer-funded subsidies, artificially “lowering” the month premium. (Because their ultimate goal is nationalized healthcare.)

It got worse. The Inflation Reduction Act “encouraged” (aka “subsidized”) even more Americans to buy government through the Obamacare website. Plus, income limits were lifted — because it was an “emergency.” Cheap healthcare for all!

Add in “free” healthcare for illegal immigrants and the costs climb still higher.

We wake up from this madness in 2025 and Democrats are shocked — shocked! — that health insurance costs have skyrocketed, “government” (i.e. the taxpayer) is now subsidizing over 24 million citizens — up from 10.6 million in 2020. They’ve created a “Sophie’s Choice” for the GOP in 2026: Keep spending billions to subsidize health insurance for over 24 million people — some individuals making $100,000/year — or pay the “political costs” of beginning to bring sanity by lowering taxpayer subsidies, and ending them for higher income people.

A colossal, demonstrable failure. Shameless Democrats have the nerve to rush to TikTok, national news and The View, screaming at the GOP: “clean-up in aisle 4!”

Forcing people to buy health insurance. Forcing people to buy more coverage than they wanted or needed. Making it illegal for small businesses and self-employed people to form groups to lower costs. Growing government (taxpayer-funded) subsidies. Removing income limits for people getting subsidies. Who would’ve thought it would make healthcare more expensive with less basic quality care?

After all, growing the federal government’s role in higher education — subsidizing student loans and providing every student with a minimum loan/subsidy amount —  has made college more “affordable:” Hasn’t it??

Reality check.

January 2025: Mortgages rates were around 7%; Eggs – $4.69/dozen; and gasoline – $3.37/gallon. 

January 2026: Mortgages – around 5.35%; Eggs – $3.29/dozen; and gasoline just hit $2.83 in Paoli.

Is everything fixed? No. Is everything affordable? Not yet. Are healthcare costs out of control — you bet!

The questions we should be asking ourselves — beyond all the political rhetoric and noise: Are things getting better? Are prices stabilizing and coming down?

And the question for 2026: The people who ignored common sense and history, caused inflation in our groceries, gasoline and utilities — and whose healthcare “fix” only made insurance companies rich. They tried to tell us that inflation wasn’t happening. Then, they used our real crises not to fix our problems but to impose more of their ideology on us.

Then, they suddenly recognized inflation after Trump won — chanting about “affordability” just to win elections.

Why on earth would we give them back power over our government?

We won’t be fooled again…

Guy Ciarrocchi writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. A Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, follow Guy at @PaSuburbsGuy.