What can the new Congress do to lower the cost of living?

For many voters who cast their ballots in last week’s midterms, affordability was top of mind. But what will the new Congress actually be able to achieve — and when can people expect things like inflation to ease?

Marc Goldwein, the senior vice president and senior policy director from the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, broke it down with “Marketplace Morning Report” host Kimberly Adams. The following is a lightly edited transcript. For the full conversation, listen using the player above.

Kimberly Adams: There are lots of reasons that money feels tight to folks right now, but which of those issues are things that Congress can actually do something about?

Marc Goldwein: Well, I think it's important to understand where this sort of affordability crisis is coming from, right? It's coming from high inflation, high interest rates, and stagnant wage growth, and these are all things that legislative action from Congress and the president caused in the first place, and therefore legislation can help us to reverse.

Adams: In your opinion, what should the Democrats, when they're in control of Congress, prioritize to lower the cost of living?

Goldwein: The most obvious thing to me is healthcare. Right, everybody understands healthcare costs are out of control. They're out of control for the federal government, for businesses, and for households. And there's so much we can do, from breaking up big hospitals to reducing overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans to getting better drug prices. Lowering healthcare costs is one of those win-win-wins. It helps the users of healthcare directly with their lower costs, and it helps them a second time because it lowers the deficits, and that flows through to less prices and lower interest rates on everything.

Adams: How soon, if at all, do you think that any of these policies could actually translate into people feeling some relief on prices?

Goldwein: Well, I think if we do some really smart things on healthcare, we can start to see the savings within a year. Now, that's not fast enough. Where I think we get more instantaneous savings is if we lower deficits overall. That can lower interest rates in the economy, and that can give us some immediate relief.

Adams: Come January, when the new Congress is sworn in, what are some of the big policy decisions that Democrats will have to make, and what hurdles are you expecting there?

Goldwein: Well, look, we're going to have to fund government, and we're going to raise the debt limit. But Democrats are also coming in wanting to reverse large parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill. I think that would be a mistake. The One Big Beautiful Bill is very expensive, and so there are parts we ought to reverse. But what they're talking about is actually reversing the cost-savings things, including some of the policies that lowered health prices, that reduced payments to hospitals. That would take us in the wrong direction when we actually need to do is is get healthcare costs even lower than they are today.

Adams: What about wrong moves? Are there things that you're worried Congress is going to do that's going to make things even less affordable now?

Goldwein: We got in this mess because we borrowed immensely under President Trump, under President Biden, and then under President Trump again. We can't get out of this mess by borrowing even more. What I'm worried about is that we're so deep in the hole that Democrats decide the best way out is to keep digging, and that's just not how holes work.