Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Senate Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee estimate families have spent $4,200 more on essentials since January 2025
A congressional committee is now putting a specific number on a year and a half of rising costs: $4,200 in additional household spending on everyday essentials since January 2025. The figure comes not from a neutral statistical agency but from the Democratic minority staff of the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee, who built it from housing,…
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Customs has certified about $107 billion in tariff refunds to importers, and none to shoppers
A sworn declaration filed in a customs lawsuit has put a number on how much of last year’s now-illegal tariff money the government has actually paid back: about $107 billion of the $166 billion collected. Every one of those dollars is going to the businesses that imported the goods and paid the duty at the…
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Tariffs cost the average American household about $1,100 a year, the Budget Lab at Yale estimates
A tariff rate hike still working its way through the U.S. economy carries a specific price tag now: about $1,100 a year for the typical American household, according to a model published by Yale’s Budget Lab. That number does not show up as a line item on any receipt or pay stub — no household…
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More than 275 utilities have raised, won approval for, or proposed rate increases since 2025
A rate increase does not land on a household’s bill the moment a utility asks for one. It moves through a public process that can take a year or more, and a request filed with state regulators this month might not show up on a statement until next winter — or never, if regulators trim…
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USDA expects egg prices to fall 30.8% this year, the steepest move in its 2026 food forecast
Grocery shoppers who watched egg cartons swing from record highs to sudden relief over the past four years are about to see one of the sharpest price moves yet. The Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service now projects retail egg prices will fall 30.8 percent for all of 2026, the single largest price change, up…
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The August consumer price index put gasoline up 27.4% over the year and fuel oil up 52%
A gallon of gasoline cost 27.4 percent more in August than a year earlier, and a gallon of home heating oil cost 52 percent more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index report for August 2026. Both figures ran far ahead of the broader cost-of-living picture: the all-items index rose 3.4 percent…
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Heating oil is projected to cost 31.3% more this winter, the steepest jump of any fuel
Not every household will feel this winter’s fuel bills the same way. Most homes that heat with electricity, natural gas or propane are facing increases in the high single digits compared with last winter — unwelcome, but familiar. Households that still burn heating oil are looking at something else: a projected 31.3 percent increase, the…
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The average effective U.S. tariff rate stood at 6.7% in July, up from 2.3% when the tariffs began
Customs officers processed roughly the same volume of imports in July 2026 as they did a year earlier, but the toll collected on every dollar of goods crossing the border looked nothing like it did when the current wave of tariffs began. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the average effective tariff rate —…
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A House bill would refund $231 billion in tariff costs to filers earning $400,000 or less, and has sat in committee since March
Six months ago, a single-page referral sent a tariff-rebate bill to the House Committee on Ways and Means, and the committee has not touched it since. H.R. 7865, the American Consumer Tariff Rebate Act of 2026, would draw on a $231.35 billion pool tied to estimated consumer tariff costs and send one-time refund payments to…
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Identity theft victims wait about 20 months for the IRS to clear their case, its taxpayer advocate reported in June
Filing a tax return this year took most households a few weeks between submission and refund. For anyone flagged as a possible identity theft victim, the timeline stretched toward two years instead. The National Taxpayer Advocate’s mid-year report to Congress, released in June, put a hard number on that wait for the first time in…