Making life harder

Through all the noise and chaos of the first 100 days of the Trump administration, a single, relatively small bit of news caught our eye last week. The administration’s widely reported plan to end the Energy Star program is, perhaps more than anything, emblematic of an administration that has absolutely no interest in government that does good things for its citizens.
There is no conceivable argument against the Energy Star program, which began under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 during the administration of Republican George H.W. Bush. It’s a public-private partnership that was devised to promote the sale of energy-saving appliances, furnaces, and other devices to achieve multiple positive outcomes, including energy savings for consumers, lower emissions to the environment, and encouragement of business innovation by increasing demand for more energy-efficient products.
The Energy Star program cost about $35 million annually and saved American families about $40 BILLION a year in energy costs. That’s a savings of almost $1,200 for every one dollar invested in the program, which is one reason it has enjoyed almost universal bipartisan support in Washington from its inception. Democrats liked the benefits to consumers and the environment, while Republicans liked that it encouraged business innovation and used a free market approach (by providing consumers with useful information) to achieve what was undeniably a public good.
It is that reality alone that probably doomed the program under the Trump administration, which has seemed to target every and any program that makes life a little better for the average American.
This is hardly the only example. We’re reporting this week on the administration’s efforts to eliminate the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides nearly 40 percent of families in Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District with help paying winter heating bills. If President Trump gets his way, the average low-income family in northeastern Minnesota, about half headed by seniors, will lose almost $600 a year and face potential shutoffs of their heat and lights.
The administration’s efforts to eliminate the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is another example. Created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, the bureau has helped to hold financial institutions, debt collectors, for-profit colleges, and payday lenders accountable for tactics that are either fraudulent or misleading. Since it’s founding in 2010, the agency has returned more than $21 billion to consumers who’ve been fleeced in one way of another.
The hit list just keeps on growing. Last month, just before Tax Day, the administration announced that it was eliminating the free tax filing program that the IRS had developed under the direction of the Inflation Reduction Act. It was one of many ways that that Biden-era policy offered cost savings to Americans by making it easier and free to file taxes online. Want to file your taxes online now? You’ll have to pay a company for that option.
And budget cuts are only part of the picture. Remember how inflation was a huge issue in the 2024 campaign? American families complained they were hurting from the rising cost of groceries and everyday items. Trump’s response? He slapped tariffs (a tax paid primarily by consumers) on everything coming into the country, including groceries and everyday household items, which is guaranteed to send prices for those goods higher and create shortages in the coming months. How does that help the average American?
Even Trump has no clear answer to that question.
Nor does he have an answer to one of the public’s other big concerns, particularly among young people – the lack of decent housing in the U.S. We’d be the first to note that this is a problem that both major political parties have failed to address, yet it won’t be helped by the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate major federal housing programs, including rental assistance, known as Section 8, which would leave 7,500 families in St. Louis County alone highly vulnerable to homelessness. Across the country, millions of families, including many seniors, the disabled, or parents of young children who are stuck in low-wage jobs, would be severely impacted. Trump’s take? Who cares?
These actions are all part of a pattern that speaks to the priorities of this president and the oligarchs who back him – priorities that do not include making life better for most Americans. Trump is gutting cancer research, mental health funding for children, the Head Start program, and a thousand other programs that have improved the lives of millions of Americans every year.
During the campaign, Trump portrayed himself as a defender of the little guy, but he’s used his authority as president to make life harder for the majority of Americans, and truly awful for far too many. And the suffering is just getting started.