U.S. Senate candidates Ken Paxton and James Talarico in Texas have taken opposite approaches to the issue of affordability. Talarico has talked about it a lot this summer. Paxton mostly ignored it, preferring to focus on touting himself as the standard-bearer for MAGA values. Neither candidate takes a swing at the most difficult questions.
Paxton, the GOP nominee, couldn't avoid the issue forever. He began offering his strategies for bringing down the cost of living late last month. His proposals are as scattershot and dubious as many of the lawsuits he has filed as attorney general. Paxton touts tax deductions for certain costs, such as out-of-pocket medical expenses, without confronting the underlying problem: How can the high cost of healthcare be lowered for everyday Americans?
Likewise, he wants $50,000 tax deductions for first-time homebuyers, as well as $50,000 deductions for a down payment on a new primary residence. The first proposal doesn't acknowledge that many moderate-income families cannot find starter homes they can afford, and a tax deduction won't change that.
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We emailed Paxton's campaign specific questions about these deductions. A staffer responded with a vague statement.
Talarico's website, meanwhile, is more detailed and covers more issues. It also leans farther left than his folksy TV ads. The Democratic candidate wants to repeal the president's tariffs, raise the minimum wage from its current $7.25 to $15 per hour, end favored tax treatment of certain kinds of investment income and fight "attacks" on Medicare and Social Security. It also castigates billionaires. ...
Some of Talarico's ideas have gained traction with blue-collar and middle-class Americans across the political spectrum. Too many people do avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that studies the nation's fiscal health, notes that closing the tax gap is among "the most fair and efficient ways for policymakers to raise revenue." The tax gap, shorthand for the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid, exceeded $606 billion in 2022.
But Social Security and Medicare must change. The Social Security trust funds will become insolvent in less than eight years, according to the committee. Unethical providers regularly target Medicare's generous benefits, devising scams that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Acknowledging and fixing the problems is not an attack on these systems; it's the only way to save them. Taxing billionaires more will not, by itself, resolve them.
The U.S. has a $32 trillion national debt, an unwillingness to confront it and a demographic challenge: The percentage of the population age 65 and older has grown much faster this decade than the share of children or working-age Americans. Deploy the wrong strategy to tackle affordability, such as random tax deductions or not reforming Social Security, and the country's economic predicament will grow worse. High grocery prices will be among the least of our problems.
