{"id":19413,"date":"2026-02-27T13:02:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-democrats-affordability-agenda-tbd\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T13:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:02:27","slug":"capitol-agenda-democrats-affordability-agenda-tbd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-democrats-affordability-agenda-tbd\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Democrats’ affordability agenda TBD"},"content":{"rendered":"
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House Democrats are hoping to solidify their legislative agenda on affordability as midterm campaigning starts to heat up. So far, they don\u2019t know what\u2019s in it.<\/p>\n

But lawmakers have gathered in Leesburg, Va. for their annual policy retreat these past few days to try and hammer out the details<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know it\u2019s not enough to just lay out the issues and what the problems are,\u201d House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) told reporters. \u201cOur goal is to have simple solutions that we can put out and lay out that vision \u2014 that if you give Democrats the gavels back, this is exactly what we\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, that message has centered on reversing President Donald Trump\u2019s policies. Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), chair of House Democrats\u2019 campaign arm, said undoing the administration\u2019s aggressive new tariffs is one of the top priorities Democratic candidates should communicate this fall.<\/p>\n

Democrats also pledge to revive Obamacare health insurance subsidies that lapsed last year and reverse cuts to federal safety-net programs Republicans made in last year\u2019s megabill.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re less set, however, on what their platform should be beyond simply opposing the policies of the party in power. Outside of Trump-related rollbacks, Democrats are discussing evergreen proposals such as expanding the child tax credit and increasing the federal minimum wage.<\/p>\n

The New Democrat Coalition \u2014 the largest ideological group in the caucus composed of more centrist members \u2014 laid out an affordability agenda with more robust proposals, addressing matters like broadband connectivity and data center construction. The group is hoping it catches Democratic leaders\u2019 attention, said Vice Chair Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) in an interview: \u201cWe want our agenda to be what comes top of mind for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Senate, having a specific affordability agenda could be especially critical for Democrats\u2019 uphill battle to flip the chamber.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very strongly that if Democrats do not put forward a positive affirmative message and vision of what we wanna do \u2014 what we will do when we\u2019re in power, what our value proposition is to the American people \u2014 it\u2019s hard to win elections,\u201d Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO on \u201cThe Conversation.\u201d<\/a> \u201cI think that was part of why we lost in this last presidential.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else we’re watching: <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Former President Bill Clinton will sit Friday for a deposition on Jeffrey Epstein in front of House Oversight Committee members in Chappaqua, N.Y. It comes a day after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified for nearly six hours<\/a> in front of the panel and appeared to offer little new or relevant information for its investigation into the late convicted sex offender. <\/p>\n

Dasha Burns, Maya Kaufman, Gelila Negesse and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Democrats are hoping to solidify their legislative agenda on affordability as midterm campaigning starts to heat up. So far, they don\u2019t know what\u2019s in it. But lawmakers have gathered in Leesburg, Va. for their annual policy retreat these past few days to try and hammer out the details. \u201cWe know it\u2019s not enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}