SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
center for budget and policy priorities
Tanking Economy and Higher Prices Put Trump on ‘Naughty List’ This Holiday Season, Group Says
"Families are heading into the holidays facing snowballing costs on everything from toys and groceries to health care and utilities, yet Trump continues to call affordability a hoax."
Dec 19, 2025
President Donald Trump delivered a speech on Wednesday in which he tried to convince US voters that the economy under his watch was the envy of the world.
However, newly released data shows that Americans are not buying it.
The latest data from the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers showed consumer sentiment of current economic conditions dropped yet again in December to a rating of 50.4, which represents a 33% drop from the 74.0 consumer sentiment rating one year ago.
The Groundwork Collaborative released a report on Friday that slammed the president's economic stewardship and said that "it is no surprise that a record number of Americans put Trump’s economic performance on the naughty list this holiday season."
The group then explained why Americans have good reason to be pessimistic.
One of the most glaring problems with Trump's economy at the moment, the group contended, is the labor market, which has reported net negative job growth over the last two months.
What's more, Groundwork Collaborative noted that "the number of people working part time for economic reasons rose to 5.5 million in November, an increase of about 909,000 since September, as Americans are unable to find full-time employment."
The group also hit Trump for his tariffs on imported goods, which have already cost the average American family an estimated $1,200 so far and are projected to cost them $2,100 next year, assuming the tariffs remain at their current levels.
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, said that current economic conditions were the opposite of what Trump promised during the 2024 presidential campaign, when he vowed to lower prices starting on his first day in office.
"Families are heading into the holidays facing snowballing costs on everything from toys and groceries to health care and utilities, yet Trump continues to call affordability a hoax," said Jacquez. "As working families yearn for the ghost of economies past, let’s hope the Scrooge in the White House makes a resolution to stop gaslighting Americans and get serious about bringing costs down in the new year."
Groundwork Collaborative's analysis came one day after the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released a report on Thursday that outlined how Trump and his Republican allies have worked to make life less affordable for US voters over the last year.
Beyond the aforementioned tariffs cited by Groundwork Collaborative, CBPP cited the major cuts that Trump and the GOP made to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that they passed into law earlier this year.
CBPP also flagged Trump and the GOP's cuts to renewable energy projects that the group argued are raising the cost of electricity at a time when electric grids are coming under heavy strain from the energy demands of artificial intelligence data centers. Making this crisis potentially even worse, the think tank noted that Trump has proposed entirely eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
Taken together, CBPP suggested that GOP policies have been taking a hatchet to the budgets of US households in the bottom half of the income distribution scale.
"Households with incomes in the bottom half of the distribution... spend almost 90% of their incomes on basic items: utilities, groceries, health care, transportation, and shelter," wrote CBPP. "And to help afford those basics, many need assistance, such as Medicaid, SNAP, or LIHEAP, that the Administration has put on the chopping block."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Defenders of Social Security Furious Over Trump Plan for Part-Time Commissioner
"Every American who has paid into Social Security should be outraged," said one Social Security advocate.
Oct 06, 2025
The Trump administration on Monday announced that Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano would also serve as a the chief executive officer at the Internal Revenue Service, in a move that was panned by defenders of the crucial anti-poverty Social Security program.
As The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that Bisignano would be filling the newly created position of CEO at the IRS, even as he retains his duties as Social Security commissioner.
According to the Journal, Bisignano "will report directly to Bessent, who will remain the formal head of the IRS as acting commissioner," and that he "will help implement the administration's vision for the IRS, which emphasizes upgraded technology and retreats from the heavier enforcement initiatives started under President Joe Biden."
Bisignano's appointment comes weeks after Billy Long, the previous IRS commissioner, got ousted from his job after working there for under two months.
Social Security advocates reacted to the move by condemning the administration for creating even more turmoil at the Social Security Administration (SSA).
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, slammed the administration for giving Bisignano added duties when he was already "unqualified" to serve as Social Security commissioner.
"Never in Social Security’s 90-year history has a commissioner held a second job," she said. "Bisignano’s new role will leave a leadership vacuum at the top of the agency, especially since Trump hasn’t even nominated a deputy commissioner."
Altman further accused the administration of "allowing Social Security to rot through sabotage and neglect" by downgrading the program's top role to part-time.
Richard Fiesta, executive director for the Alliance for Retired Americans, similarly emphasized that running the SSA was "a full-time job," and said that the Trump administration had already caused "chaos" at the agency by slashing longtime staff members.
"Every American who has paid into Social Security should be outraged," he said. "Americans pay for the workers and administration of the agency through their Social Security withholdings in every paycheck. We expect a full-time commissioner for our money. Instead, we’re now getting a part-time commissioner drawing a full salary from our Social Security taxes."
Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, described Bisignano’s appointment as "alarming news" and said it raises "major concerns."
Specifically, Romig warned about potential security breaches of Americans' data at both the IRS and SSA.
"We know that from the beginning they’ve been trying to bulldoze protections of the sensitive data that each agency holds," she wrote in a post on Bluesky. "Early this year, acting heads of both SSA and Treasury were both pushed out over data access"
She then pointed to reports that the Department of Government Efficiency has been working on a "data lake" that uses sensitive information from both agencies "to track and surveil undocumented immigrants" residing in the US.
"This unprecedented arrangement cries out for meaningful oversight to ensure that each agency adequately serves the public, conflicts of interest are resolved, and our most sensitive data are protected," she said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump-GOP Hiding Federal Data So Nobody Will Know the Depth of the Destruction They Are Sowing
"Without sufficient funding and freedom from political interference, the federal statistical system as we know it—and our ability to make economic and policy decisions based in reality—are in jeopardy," said researchers.
Sep 29, 2025
In recent weeks, efforts by the Trump administration to conceal statistics and data from the public have made headlines—from the US Department of Justice's decision to delete a 2024 study that showed right-wing extremists are behind the vast majority of ideologically driven killings in the US, contrary to the White House's repeated claims about violence from the left, to President Donald Trump's firing of a top economist after an unfavorable jobs report that he said was released to hurt him politically.
In a new report Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) detailed how Trump's overt politicization of data has combined with funding cuts to make it harder for experts—and the public that's impacted by the Trump administration's agenda—to see how those very policies are impacting households across the country.
"Without sufficient funding and freedom from political interference, the federal statistical system as we know it—and our ability to make economic and policy decisions based in reality—are in jeopardy," said CBPP bsenior research analyst Victoria Hunter Gibney and vice president for housing and income security Cara Brumfield.
The report warns of "disappearing federal data"—both information that has been surreptitiously yanked from public view and data that the administration has announced will no longer be available, like the US Department of Agriculture annual Household Food Security reports.
As Common Dreams reported last week, the agency called the survey "redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous" and claimed they have "failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder," as it said it would stop publishing the data—the federal government's main source of information on hunger.
"Without data, it is also going to be hard not only to fact-check Trump and his cronies but to measure the (most likely horrific) impact of Trump’s policies."
The decision followed the Republican Party's passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which includes the biggest-ever cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 children—are facing food insecurity.
In addition to preemptively rejecting research that would have shown the impact of the GOP's SNAP cuts, the administration has shown no interest in tracking weather disasters via its Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which was discontinued in May; the effects of crime on LGBTQ+ Americans via National Crime Victimization Survey; and even the existence of LGBTQ+ communities via the National Health Interview Survey.
The administration has also stopped the federal government from collecting data by overseeing mass layoffs across the public servant workforce, with the Department of Health and Human Services placing researchers with the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on administrative leave in April—ending the government's accounting of maternal mortality numbers. HHS also laid off the analysts who worked on federal poverty guidelines that are used to calculate eligibility for parts of Medicaid as well as nutrition and home energy assistance.
In a multitude of ways, the CBPP said, the administration is "suppressing data that would reveal the harmful effects of the Republican megabill’s deep cuts and leaving families’ struggles harder to track."
The report also warns that "brain drain" is worsening the US Census Bureau's ability to collect population data that helps determine communities' representation in Congress, federal funding allocation, and plan community services. Former Census Bureau Director Robert Santos left halfway through his five-year term shortly after Trump took office in January. Santos spearheaded efforts to make the survey more inclusive and emphasized rebuilding trust with immigrant and Latino communities after Trump, during his first term, pushed to include a citizenship question on the survey.
A top economist at the Census Bureau, Ron Jarmin, was also replaced this month by Trump appointee George Cook, who has "no prior government experience and no advanced training in statistical methods," the CBPP said.
The Republican Party is currently pushing to further weaken efforts to count the population of the US, with the House Appropriations Committee reporting out legislation this month to officially designate the decennial census as voluntary and drastically limit efforts to follow up with nonrespondents. Mandatory participation is not enforced, but the Census Bureau has found that response rates plummet when the survey is officially designated as voluntary.
The proposed change would "seriously exacerbate risks to data quality from nonresponse bias," said the CBPP.
The same bill reported out by the House committee proposed slashing $40 million from the Census Bureau budget, impacting the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which collects data on a number of economic well-being indicators and "enables policymakers to understand how proposed laws will change eligibility and costs."
The reduced version of SIPP that would be funded by the bill "is unlikely to provide the uniquely rich content (such as month-by-month income data) and structure (such as following children as they move between different caregivers’ homes) that allow the current SIPP to answer policymakers’ questions about families, their needs, and the programs that serve them," said the group.
The CBPP released its analysis as Liza Featherstone wrote at The New Republic that the president is "waging a catastrophic war on data" that is "fundamental to Trump and his authoritarian regime."
Trump's destructive cuts to agencies and surveys that collect crucial data have been paired with numerous baseless claims by the president and his allies—that Tylenol taken in pregnancy causes autism, that violence is surging in cities where he plans to deploy federal troops, and that transgender people disproportionately commit mass shootings and violence.
"It will be increasingly hard for correctives on such points to get traction, however, since Trump’s administration has greatly reduced its own ability to collect and disseminate accurate information about crime," wrote Featherstone.
"Without data, it is also going to be hard not only to fact-check Trump and his cronies but to measure the (most likely horrific) impact of Trump’s policies," she added. "That too is almost certainly intentional—or at least very convenient for him."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular