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joint economic committee
Average US Electric Bill Up $110—or 6.4%—Under Trump in 2025
"American families don't need a report to tell them that the president has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs."
Mar 17, 2026
Over two weeks into President Donald Trump and Israel's illegal war on Iran, which is driving up oil prices around the world, Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee revealed Tuesday that the average US electric bill increased by $110, or 6.4%, last year.
The Democratic JEC staff compared monthly data from the federal Energy Information Administration for 2024, when Trump was campaigning to return to office against then-Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, and 2025, when the Republican returned to power, having repeatedly promised to cut electric bills in half.
The JEC report highlights that last year's national average was "even higher than the increase the committee projected last November," plus "annual electricity costs were higher in 2025 in nearly every state, and were at least 10% higher in 12 states and DC."
The states with the highest bills were Connecticut and Hawaii, which each had an average of $2,490 for 2025. They were followed by Alabama at $2,230, Maryland at $2,220, Massachusetts at $2,190, Texas at $2,080, and Florida at $2,010.
In terms of the largest increases last year, the District of Columbia saw the biggest jump: a 23.5% rise from $1,360 to $1,680. New Jersey led all states with a 16.9% hike from $1,540 to $1,800, followed by Illinois at 15.9%, Pennsylvania at 12.1%, Kentucky at 11.8%, Maryland and Tennessee at 11.6%, New York at 11.4%, Ohio at 11.1%, and Missouri at 11%.
"American families don't need a report to tell them that the president has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs; they already feel the impact of President Trump's actions every single day," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the panel's ranking member. "But this report is yet another indication that sky-high costs are continuing to rise—and are continuing to hurt American families."
Throughout last year, lawmakers and other experts warned of various policies expected to drive up utility bills, including the Republican budget package, or so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which eliminated tax credits for solar and wind energy.
"Trump and Republicans are accelerating their self-inflicted energy crisis with continued project cancellations," the group Climate Power declared in a December report that blamed the administration for hurting "projects that would have produced enough electricity to power the equivalent of 13 million homes."
The Trump administration is also advocating for the construction of artificial intelligence data centers, despite warnings that the unregulated buildup of such facilities is causing local electricity costs to soar, plus threatening nearby communities and the global climate.
There's also US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, which are not only exacerbating the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency but also pushing up energy prices for Americans, as Public Citizen detailed in a December report. The watchdog noted that "1 in 6 Americans—21 million households—are behind on their energy bills," which "are rising at twice the rate of inflation."
"Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have acted as global gas salesmen, traveling to Europe to push exports and gut European methane regulations while attacking mainstream climate science," Tyson Slocum, report author and director of the Public Citizen's Energy Program, said at the time. "Meanwhile, Trump has done nothing to keep prices down at home."
The report preceded Big Oil-backed Trump launching a war on Iran without congressional authorization. While causing oil prices to skyrocket, his Operation Epic Fury is expected to boost the US LNG industry, with one expert projecting earlier this month that American companies could see up to $20 billion per month in windfall profits if the global market is deprived of Qatari gas until the summer.
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Congress Finds 4 Data Breaches Cost Public $20 Billion, Fueling Calls for Action to 'Protect Americans From Scams'
"As international criminal syndicates increasingly use scams to target Americans, data brokers shouldn’t make it harder for people to protect themselves," said the Joint Economic Committee's ranking member.
Feb 27, 2026
Just four major data broker breaches in recent years have cost US consumers over $20 billion, according to a Thursday report from a key leader in Congress that argues "additional action is needed to protect Americans from scams."
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), ranking member of the congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC), launched a sweeping investigation into financial scams last July. As part of it, she's examined data brokers, which collect and sell individuals' personal information. These companies often operate with limited transparency, her report explains, making it "more difficult for individuals to secure their information online and, ultimately, protect themselves from the growing threat of scams."
"Data brokers, for example, can enable scams by making consumers' personal information available to bad actors, who can then use details like Social Security numbers, home addresses, or banking information to develop customized and convincing scams," the report explains. "In some cases, data brokers have allegedly sold this information directly to scammers; in others, cyber hacks of data brokers have exposed individuals' data to uncontrolled circulation online."
Last August, after Wired reported that some data brokers took steps to hide their opt-out pages, Hassan issued investigative requests to Comscore, Findem, IQVIA Digital, Telesign, and 6Sense Insights. The report states that all of the companies but Findem responded with "actions to make their opt-out options more accessible to consumers and other parties," which "included removing 'no index' code that had blocked opt-out pages from search engine results, adding opt-out links in more prominent locations, and publishing blog content explaining how people can exercise their privacy rights."
"Notably," the report continues, "Findem did not respond to the ranking member's requests or written outreach from committee staff and has not removed the 'no index' code from its opt-out page—raising serious concerns about its responsiveness to opt-out requests and commitment to data privacy."
While recognizing the other companies for their positive responses, Hassan's report also stresses that more must be done. For instance, she requested information about efforts "to audit or assess the visibility of opt-out options or the success rates of opt-out requests," and "only 6sense stated that it contracts with third-party auditors to conduct both of these assessments."
Highlighting the need for further action, Hassan's staff estimated that identity theft stemming from four large data broker breaches—Equifax in 2017, impacting 147 million US residents; Exactis in 2018, impacting 230 million; National Public in 2023, impacting 270 million; and TransUnion in 2025, impacting 4.4 million—cost American consumers $20.9 billion.
"As international criminal syndicates increasingly use scams to target Americans, data brokers shouldn't make it harder for people to protect themselves," Hassan said in a statement. "This report shows the scope of the threat that people face from data broker breaches and underscores the importance of protecting Americans' private data."
She added that "it is encouraging that after we launched our investigation, many companies took steps to improve opt-out options for Americans, which in turn can help more consumers keep their information out of the wrong hands."
As a related webpage from the Electronic Privacy Information Center details: "There is no federal law in the United States that adequately regulates the data broker industry. As a result, private companies invade our private lives, spy on our families, and gather our most intimate facts, on a mass scale, for profit. EPIC supports state and federal legislative efforts that set limits on data brokers’ collection, use, retention, and disclosure of personal data."
In recent years, members of Congress have introduced various legislative proposals aimed at reining in data brokers—including in the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act, introduced on Monday. The bipartisan bill would, among other things, close the so-called "data broker loophole" that, as Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) put it, "intelligence and law enforcement agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment" to the US Constitution.
There are some limits that have passed, including in Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission sent letters reminding 13 companies of their obligations to comply with the PADFAA, which "prohibits data brokers from selling, licensing, renting, trading, transferring, releasing, disclosing, providing access to, or otherwise making available personally identifiable sensitive data of a United States individual to any foreign adversary country or any entity that is controlled by a foreign adversary."
However, as Lartease Tiffith, an expert at American and George Mason universities, laid out in an article for Just Security last November, while Congress enacted the PADFAA "with the right goal," the law, as written, "could penalize legitimate US companies for routine global operations while failing to deliver the targeted national security tool Congress intended."
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Congressional Report Warns TrumpRx May Lead 'Families to Pay More to Big Pharma'
"The president should work with Democrats and Republicans to actually lower prescription drug costs for families," said Sen. Maggie Hassan, "rather than helping Big Pharma line its pockets."
Feb 13, 2026
Democratic members of the congressional Joint Economic Committee on Friday released a report warning that US families could end up spending thousands of dollars more on prescription drugs because of a website recently unveiled by President Donald Trump.
Launched last week with pharmaceutical companies, TrumpRx.gov is marketed as an aggregator to help patients save on prescription drugs by using manufacturer coupons or buying directly from manufacturers.
However, as the new report highlights, "many of the brand-name drugs listed on TrumpRx have significantly cheaper generic alternatives, which are excluded from TrumpRx. This means that TrumpRx steers families to pay more to Big Pharma when they could be getting the same medication at a much lower price."
"No matter what the president says, the bottom line is that TrumpRx directs families to buy expensive brand-name drugs when generic versions are available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost."
The report provides a chart comparing TrumpRx and generic prices, both for one prescription fill and the full annual cost. It also notes the difference. In some cases, the president's option is $10-50 more a year. However, there are also examples in which families could save hundreds or thousands of dollars with generic drugs.
For example, Colestid, a medication that lowers cholesterol, would cost $2,771.21 a year through TrumpRx, compared with $856.70 for the generic option, a difference of $1,914.51. The antidepressant Pristiq is $2,401.20 on the president's website, versus just $320.88 for the generic, a potential yearly savings of $2,080.32.
The biggest difference featured in the document is for Tikosyn, which helps patients maintain a normal heart rhythm. The TrumpRx annual cost is $4,032, whereas the generic is only $192.68, a difference of $3,839.32.
The report also stresses how extra costs from the president's site could stack up for households in which multiple people need medication:
- For example, if in one family a parent gets treatment for high cholesterol and their child gets treated for seizures, over the course of 2026 this family would pay $2,142 more if they use TrumpRx versus generic drug alternatives.
- For another family where one adult gets treatment for depression while the other receives treatment for menopause symptoms, over the course of 2026 this family would pay $2,493 more if they use TrumpRx versus generic drug alternatives.
"No matter what the president says, the bottom line is that TrumpRx directs families to buy expensive brand-name drugs when generic versions are available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee and the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care.
"The president should work with Democrats and Republicans to actually lower prescription drug costs for families," Hassan argued, "rather than helping Big Pharma line its pockets."
While the Trump White House responded defensively to the Democratic report, with spokesperson Kush Desai claiming to MS NOW that "product listings on TrumpRx.gov are in no way an endorsement for use of any prescription drug over another" and accusing Democrats of "resorting to idiotic or simply ignorant lines of attack instead of simply giving the president credit where it's due," the panel members aren't alone is highlighting such cost differences.
The added cost for US families also isn't lawmakers' only concern about TrumpRx. Last month, shortly before the site's launch, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.) Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Peter Welch (Vt.) sent a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General raising concerns about the new direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform.
"There appear to be possible conflicts of interest involved in the potential relationship between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx, on whose board the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., has sat since February 2025," they wrote. "Moreover, legitimate concerns about inappropriate prescribing, conflicts of interest, and inadequate care have been raised about the exact types of DTC platforms to which TrumpRx would route patients."
The trio also expressed alarm about high prices, noting that "pharmaceutical manufacturers who will reportedly be participating in TrumpRx have spent billions of dollars in combined advertising expenses for drugs sold on existing DTC platforms."
"The pharmaceutical industry's outrageous DTC advertisements fuel demand for specific medications, which balloon healthcare expenses," the senators wrote. "We are concerned that DTC advertising, including in relation to TrumpRx, will steer customers to prescriptions that may be reimbursed by federal health programs, creating the potential for unnecessary or wasteful spending."
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