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'Working Families Foot Trump's Bill Twice' as Fed Hikes Rates Amid Worsening Affordability Crisis
One campaigner asserted that Trump's "recklessness in the White House has pushed working families’ budgets to their breaking point."
Sep 16, 2026
The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2023, prompting renewed criticism from progressive economists and Democratic lawmakers who argue that President Donald Trump’s tariffs and warmongering are fueling inflation and further squeezing working families.
The 12-member Federal Open Market Committee unanimously lifted its federal funds target range by a quarter percentage point, to 3.75-4%, while signaling that it could raise the rate again to around 4.1% in the coming months. Fed officials cited persistently elevated inflation and said the move would support a “timelier return” to their 2% inflation target.
The increase came despite months of pressure from President Donald Trump for the central bank to cut rates. Trump has repeatedly demanded substantially lower borrowing costs, including calling for rates as low as 1%, while accusing the Fed of holding rates too high.
"Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World—BY FAR," Trump said on his Truth Social network in response to the hike. "Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year."
The United States is actually rated AA+ by S&P and Fitch—which is not the "best credit in the world" by any measure. Numerous nations have AAA ratings from major agencies, the highest level of creditworthiness.
"The word 'Deficit' is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS," Trump added. "We are 'carrying' almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!"
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh—whom Trump tapped to lead the central bank—nonetheless backed the increase. The Fed's latest projections indicate that inflation will remain above its target and that most officials anticipate at least one additional rate increase before the end of the year.
The rate hike means consumers and businesses will face higher borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and other debt. The average 30-year mortgage rate had already risen above 7% by Wednesday.
Referring to the worsening affordability crisis caused by Trump administration choices like tariffs and the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, the progressive economic advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative lamented how "working families foot Trump's bill twice."
Trump's "never-ending war with Iran and his chaotic tariffs have driven inflation high enough that his own pick for chairman raised rates anyway, in a unanimous vote—a decision that will lead to higher borrowing costs for families and small businesses but does little to combat high prices from Trump’s economic mismanagement," the group said in a statement.
Groundwork Collaborative chief economist Breyon Williams said that "Trump can deny, disparage, and deflect from Americans’ economic reality all he wants, but there’s no hiding the truth: His recklessness in the White House has pushed working families’ budgets to their breaking point."
"Under his watch, inflation has skyrocketed, prices on essentials like gas and groceries have emptied wallets, and the labor market has lost steam," Williams added. "Today’s decision from the Federal Reserve confirms Americans’ fears of continued price pains to come, and its own forecast now says families will not see borrowing costs go down until 2028.”
Addressing the Fed rate hike, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday that "the chaos of Trump’s disastrous war and costly economic policies are drowning Americans in inflation. Trump has sown chaos in our economy, scared off potential investors, rattled our markets, and made it harder for American workers and businesses alike to succeed."
"Ever since taking office, Trump has taken aim at the Fed and other institutions designed to keep our economy stable and growing. That has only added to the economic chaos plaguing our country," he added. "But what does Trump care? Trump doesn’t care that Americans have to pay to more; he only cares about raking in as much money as he can off the presidency before Americans send him and his Republican Party packing."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said during a Wednesday interview on CNN that "it's the American people who are paying the price" for Trump's policies.
"There is no happy solution at this moment based on interest rates," she added.
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Alan Greenspan, Longtime Fed Chair and Ayn Rand Disciple, Meets Ultimate ‘Invisible Hand’
"For decades, he preached that the self-interest of the predator was the invisible hand of the common good," Yanis Varoufakis said after the man who led the US central bank under four presidents died aged 100.
Jun 22, 2026
Alan Greenspan, whose policies during nearly 20 years as US Federal Reserve chair fueled soaring economic inequality and helped create the conditions for multiple economic crashes, died Monday at age 100 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
While many corporate media outlets published hagiographic obituaries lionizing the "Maestro" who presided over nearly two decades of low inflation, rising stock prices, and American economic confidence, critics focused on Greenspan's role in promoting dangerous deregulation and "easy money" policies that inflated financial bubbles, with sometimes disastrous results.
Robert Reich—who served as US labor secretary under President Bill Clinton during all of Greenspan's tenure—called him "in many ways the most powerful person in America" during that era.
"If any single person was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, it was Greenspan."
"He maintained an iron grip over the Fed, and almost single-handedly decided on interest rates," Reich wrote. "He essentially fired George H. W. Bush by raising interest rates so high (ostensibly to ward off the inflation then threatening the economy) that the economy took a dive, and voters blamed Bush. This was enough to convince my boss, Bill Clinton, to do exactly what Greenspan wanted—which was to reduce the federal budget deficit and thereby destroy much of the agenda Clinton ran on (and I helped create)."
"I don’t want to speak ill of anyone who has passed. Greenspan was an extremely charming, intelligent, and thoughtful man," Reich added. "But the truth must be told: If any single person was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, it was Greenspan. That crisis—the worst collapse since 1929, which led to the worst recession in decades, in which millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and even their homes—resulted from the deregulation of Wall Street that Greenspan advocated."
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote on X: "His epitaph? A singular, glorious confession, 'I found a flaw in my model of the world.' A flaw, he said, as though it were a leaky pipe, not a total collapse of the intellectual architecture that anointed him Oracle. For decades, he preached that the self-interest of the predator was the invisible hand of the common good.
"Then, in 2008, the beast devoured the table, and to his credit, he blinked, admitting that his entire worldview—the one that central bankers canonized and the world swallowed—was a fairy tale for rentiers," Varoufakis added. "He did not, of course, admit to culpability. That would require a moral compass, a device notably absent from his Ayn Randian toolbelt. No, he merely noted the flaw, as a meteorologist might note a gust of wind, and returned to his well-earned silence."
Born 10 miles from Wall Street in Manhattan's Washington Heights during one of the most infamous economic bubbles of all time, Greenspan was a protégé of libertarian writer and philosopher Ayn Rand and was influenced by the Atlas Shrugged author's moral defense of capitalism, her fierce advocacy of deregulation, and her insidious insistence that self-interest was socially beneficial.
Their relationship cooled as Greenspan embraced more mainstream economic policies despised by Rand and gradually became a leading steward of the very sort of state-shepherded system she deeply distrusted.
After heading President Gerald Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, Greenspan was appointed chair of the Fed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. He would remain in the post well into George W. Bush's second term.
Greenspan generally favored low interest rates, especially after crises like the 1987 stock market crash, the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management crisis, and the 2001 recession. His fame grew after he suggested that the economy might be experiencing a tech-driven “productivity miracle," language that many investors took as validation that traditional valuation limits were obsolete.
Critics would later call it a "productivity mirage."
Staunch devotion to low interest rates by Greenspan's Fed boosted stock prices and real estate values under "easy money" policies. Many investors came to believe that the Fed would intervene aggressively whenever markets fell sharply—the so-called "Greenspan Put."
However, since ownership of financial assets (and the firms that sell and promote them) is concentrated among the wealthy, it was the rich who benefited most from Greenspan's polices. When bubbles burst, as they did after the dot-com boom that ended in early 2000 and during the 2008 global financial crisis, the rich bounced back thanks to their diversified portfolios and bailouts, while middle- and lower-income households were wiped out through asset devaluation, foreclosures, and job losses.
"It is no exaggeration to say the global financial crisis of 2008 had an enormous and lasting impact on American life and the way ordinary people view elites," New York Times global economic correspondent Peter S. Goodman said on social media. "It is also no exaggeration to say that Alan Greenspan has as much responsibility for the crisis as an individual can."
"For those not old enough to remember, it is difficult to state his aura during his time of greatest influence," Goodman continued. "When he told Americans that they should buy houses and use variable-rate mortgages to do it, they listened. Much is made of his econ jargon-laden vernacular that went over the heads of nearly all listeners."
"That was central to the mystique," he added. "When he went to the Hill and spoke to Congress, most people had no idea what he was talking about but assumed that smarter kids did. And so his quasi-religious faith in the efficiency of markets as the ultimate insurance against risk went unchallenged and became dogma, and the risks kept building."
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