How Trump and His Congressional Allies Drove Up Gas Prices and Cost Families At Least $2,000

A recent CNN poll found that 77 percent of Americans believe President Donald Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living in their communities. This analysis of votes in the 119th Congress under President Trump’s second term illustrates that: A) Those 77 percent of Americans are correct and B) President Trump could not have completed any aspect of his cost-raising agenda without the votes of his allies in Congress.

This article examines how those congressional votes have led directly to increased costs back home for many Americans. This analysis examines the cumulative effect of four distinct federal policies that have resulted in higher costs at the state and local level.

• President Trump’s war against Iran has increased gasoline prices
• Clean energy cuts in OBBBA have increased utility costs
• Tariffs have increased prices on groceries and other goods
• Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credit expiration has resulted in higher premium costs for families purchasing insurance on the ACA marketplace

The following table shows which members of Congress voted to raise these costs and by how much in their respective states.

Through June 30, 2026, these votes have cost the average household an additional $2,072 in gas, utility, and tariff costs. That total increases to $3,569 for a typical household if they receive their health care on an ACA marketplace. The cumulative costs to families will continue to grow, and Congress had the opportunity to block each one.

Trump’s war in Iran leads to sustained elevated gas prices: $285 per family nationally

When President Trump was asked whether he anticipated higher gas prices as a result of his war against Iran, he responded, “I knew oil prices would go up if I did this, and they’ve gone up probably less than I thought they’d go up.”

The impact was even clearer when the House and Senate were given the opportunity to weigh in after hostilities had already begun. On March 4, 2026, when the Senate first voted to end the war in Iran, the national average gas price had already risen from $2.97 per gallon to $3.24 per gallon. On March 5, 2026, when the House first weighed in, the price per gallon had risen to about $3.30. It was well known at both times that prices would likely continue to rise, and indeed they did. Both measures would have halted the war if passed, but they were voted down, not just once but three times in the House and seven times in the Senate before the House finally passed a war-powers resolution on June 3, 2026.

The national average gas price as of June 16 was $4.04 per gallon. According to the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University, as of June 12, Americans had spent an extra $31.8 billion at the pump, amounting to $242.91 per household. By the end of June, that figure could rise to $285 per household if costs continue to rise at the same rate as they did during the first 104 days of the war.

Trump’s “blockade” against wind, solar, and transmission leads to elevated utility costs: $213 per family nationally

As President Trump took office, the need for increased energy production was well known. Indeed, on President Trump’s first day of his second term, he declared an “energy emergency.” However, the substance of the order—and the legislation and executive actions that followed—did not match the urgency or even direction of that title. Rather than cut energy costs in half as promised, as of March 2026, household electricity prices had increased by 16 percent since Trump entered office and were up 9 percent over the same time last year.

Republicans in Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and President Trump signed it into law on July 4, 2025. The law repealed or severely curtailed a suite of tax credits that had been incentivizing dramatic growth in energy industries—including solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicle manufacturing—based on the 10-year tax certainty intended in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Throughout the legislative process, energy analysts and key industries warned in no uncertain terms that proceeding with the repeal of these tax credits would undercut investments and jobs and lead to utility rate increases. Those warnings came from Republican governors; from self-proclaimed moderate Republican House members (who nonetheless went on to vote for the legislation repeatedly throughout the process); from power companies; from the data center coalition representing major tech companies; from the president’s own closely aligned wealthy tech investors; and from virtually all major building trades unions.

And yet, at virtually every step in the legislative process, the restrictions and curtailments on the tax credits became even more aggressive. In the Senate, every Republican voted against an amendment to salvage the tax credits that would have allowed the rest of the legislation to proceed. After a final effort from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) dialed back the harshest restrictions at the last moment, hardline opponents of wind and solar in the House of Representatives obtained a promise from the president to use all of his executive powers to stifle solar and wind energy as a condition of passage.

Since President Trump began his multipronged effort to effectively ban new wind and solar energy—affirmed and massively expanded by the passage of OBBBA—the collision of cratering energy supply and exponential demand growth has led to the very result that many warned President Trump and Republicans in Congress against.

Based on U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data on residential electricity sales from January 2025 to March 2026, families have spent $183.66 more on utility bills since President Trump took office, with states seeing totals as high as $515.32. By the end of June, that total could rise to $213 if bills continue to rise at the same rate as in 2025.

Trump’s blanket tariffs directly led to higher costs on imports and goods with international supply chains

The purpose of tariffs is to raise prices on specific goods that are produced abroad or include foreign components in their supply chains in order to give a competitive advantage to domestically produced goods. President Trump’s blanket tariff policies against every country in the world on most goods, including most food products, in contrast simply raise the cost of an immense range of goods that Americans purchase every day.

Some examples of staples that saw costs increase for consumers include:

Groceries: Coffee along with vegetables—such as tomatoes, limes, and avocados imported from Central and South America—faced steep tariffs until Trump exempted them in late 2025, recognizing the impact they had on consumers and under intense pressure from the restaurant industry.

Furniture and appliances: Upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets, and household appliances are subject to increased tariffs ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent, with smaller furniture retailers facing especially dire impacts, as they were forced to raise costs.

Pharmaceutical drug prices: In April, the Trump White House announced sweeping tariffs against imported pharmaceutical products that the Tax Foundation estimates will increase costs by $19 billion to $23 billion

Because tariffs are collected at the border and passed through to consumers nationwide, their cost is measured as a single national figure rather than state by state. CAP has recorded the increase in tariff revenue collected; adjusted for the roughly 70 percent which experts say has been passed on to consumers; and then divided that total across U.S. households. In total, the average household paid about $1,000 in higher tariff costs in the first year alone—and roughly $1,600 through June 2026 as the 2026 tariffs continued.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled on February 20, 2026, that the president lacked unilateral authority to levy these tariffs, but not before they had hit Americans’ budgets, and then the administration reimposed a 10 percent global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 on February 24, 2026. Over the last 16 months, both chambers of Congress held multiple votes on whether to block these tariffs or allow them to proceed, and sufficient bipartisan opposition would have overcome any presidential veto. None of these efforts has ultimately stopped President Trump’s tariffs.

Trump’s refusal to extend enhanced ACA premium tax credits led to doubling of health care premium costs for millions

The enhanced premium tax credits that lowered ACA marketplace premiums expired on December 31, 2025. Congress could have extended them; in fact, the government was shut down for 43 days as Congressional Democrats attempted to force the issue. The House actually did extend the credits in January through 2028 by a vote of 230 to 196, but only after a discharge petition forced the bill to the floor over the objection of nine Republicans. 196 Republicans still voted no. The Senate then refused to act. A Senate amendment to preserve the credits had already failed 47 to 53 on June 30, 2025, with every Republican opposed, and a standalone extension died on a failed cloture vote, 51 to 48, on December 11, 2025.

As a result, the average monthly net premium cost among marketplace enrollees increased by 58 percent in 2026. For a family of four with two adults age 45 and two kids ages 15 and 10 making $66,000 annually buying coverage on an ACA marketplace, that means roughly $3,025 more in premiums this year in the vast majority of states. Unlike the gas, utility, and tariff costs, which fall on every household, this increase hits the roughly 24 million Americans who buy their insurance on the marketplaces.

Conclusion

Taken together, the impacts of these policies continue to squeeze household budgets—and every one of them traces back to a vote in the 119th Congress.

The war in Iran pushed up gas prices. The repeal of clean-energy tax credits in the OBBBA pushed up electricity bills. Blanket tariffs pushed up grocery, furniture, appliance, and drug prices. And the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits pushed up health insurance costs. None of it was inevitable, and every impact was warned against beforehand. At each step, members of Congress had the chance to halt the war, preserve the energy credits, end the tariffs, and extend the health care subsidies. However, at each step, Congress voted to let the costs fall on their constituents.

By the middle of 2026, the average American household has already paid about $2,072 more for gas, electricity, and tariff-affected goods since President Trump took office. For the roughly 24 million families who buy their own coverage on the ACA marketplace, that total climbs to about $3,569 once doubled premiums are added in. And the meter is still running: On the current trajectory, those figures reach roughly $3,168 and $6,162 by the end of 2026.

The costs continue to pile up—and the votes show who is to blame.

Methodology

Each dollar figure in this analysis is an extra cost per household, measured against a pre-Trump baseline, that the authors attribute primarily to four federal policies enacted or sustained during President Trump’s second term. The first is gas, higher gasoline prices stemming from the war with Iran. The second is utilities, higher residential electricity bills due to this administration’s efforts to ban new wind and solar energy that increased more after the clean-energy repeals in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The third is tariffs, which raised prices on imported and import-dependent goods. The fourth is health care, where Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace premiums climbed after the enhanced premium tax credits expired.

Gas, utilities, and tariffs are averaged across all households. Health care works differently. It is the premium increase for a family of four buying coverage on an ACA marketplace, a group of roughly 24 million Americans, rather than an average spread across every household. Because marketplace premiums vary with age, income, and geography, the premium figures here are specific to the state and family composition in the Keep Americans Covered fact sheets the authors used to source their numbers from: two adults age 45 and two children ages 10 and 15, with a household income of $66,000. Alaska and Hawaii are the exceptions, set at $82,500 and $75,900 respectively, and data for Connecticut was not available.

For that reason the authors report two separate totals. The “average household” figure is gas plus utilities plus tariffs. The “marketplace family of four” figure adds the ACA premium increase on top of that.

The authors sum the same four components over three different time windows, each answering a slightly different question. The first runs through June 30, 2026 and captures what a household has already paid since the policies took effect. The second spans February 2025 through December 2026 and gives the full running total over the second term so far plus the remainder of the year. The third, the full-year 2026 columns isolate calendar year 2026 to show the annualized additional cost for this year on its own. Every component is pro-rated to the relevant window using the methods described below.

How each category is calculated

Gas figures come from Brown University’s Iran War Energy Cost Tracker. For each state, the tracker reports the extra gasoline cost per household since the war began on February 28, 2026; as of the June 12, 2026 data pull, that covered 104 days since the war began and reflected gasoline only, with diesel excluded, putting the national figure at $242.91. The authors project this forward by scaling the $242.91 figure forward assuming the cost of gas remains roughly the same as it was on June 12th for each of the projection windows. For the window through June 30, 2026, that means multiplying by 122/104, which brings the national figure to roughly $285. For the February 2025–December 2026 and calendar-year-2026 windows, the multiplier is 306/104, carrying the period through December 31, 2026 and raising the national figure to about $715. Because gasoline costs were zero before the war, this component appears in 2026 only.

Utility costs draw on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Form EIA-861M on residential electricity. The calculation rests on two per-state building blocks: the 2025 increment, meaning the full-year 2025 residential bill above its 2024 baseline, and the Q1 2026 increment, the January–March 2026 bill above its Q1 2024 baseline. Nationally these come to $115.44 and $68.22. Because EIA data run only through the first quarter of 2026, the authors hold later months at the 2025 monthly rate. The window through June 30, 2026 therefore combines the 2025 increment, the Q1 2026 increment, and three additional months (April through June) at the 2025 monthly rate, for about $213 nationally. The February 2025–December 2026 window extends those projected months through December, nine in all, for roughly $270. The calendar-year-2026 figure drops the 2025 increment entirely and counts only Q1 2026 plus the nine projected months, about $155.

Tariffs are treated as a single national figure applied uniformly to every state, since the authors are aware of no defensible way to split them state by state. For 2025, covering February through December, the figure is $975 per household. It begins with the $188 billion increase in U.S. Customs tariff revenue (versus 2024 tariff revenue) from tariffs President Trump imposed over the 11 months he was in office in 2025, applies a 70 percent consumer pass-through (the share that reaches consumers directly through higher import prices, per CBO), and divides by 134.8 million households, which works out to roughly $975. The $188 billion figure was calculated using the same methodology as an earlier Center for American Progress report from this year. For 2026, the authors use the Yale Budget Lab’s annual per-household estimate of $1,208, from State of U.S. Tariffs (April 8, 2026), applied across all of calendar 2026 beginning January 1. The two sources do not overlap, with CAP covering 2025 and Yale covering 2026. From these inputs, the window through June 30, 2026 combines the full 2025 cost of $975 with the January–June share of the Yale figure, about $604 for six months or $599 when prorated by day through June 30, for roughly $1,574; the February 2025–December 2026 window adds the full Yale year to the 2025 cost, $975 plus $1,208, or $2,183; and the calendar-year-2026 figure is the Yale estimate alone, $1,208.

Health care figures come from the Keep Americans Covered state impact analyses. For each state, the authors use the annual premium increase for a family of four (2 adults age 45 and 2 children ages 15 and 10) at the state’s benchmark income tier, which is $66,000 in most states, $82,500 in Alaska, and $75,900 in Hawaii, with Connecticut not published. The national increase of $2,994 is the enrollment-weighted average of those state family-of-four figures, weighted by CMS 2026 Marketplace plan state enrollments and excluding Connecticut. The enhanced premium tax credits held through December 31, 2025, so there is no 2025 cost, and the increase begins January 1, 2026. The window through June 30, 2026, therefore carries half the annual increase, about $1,497 nationally, while both the February 2025–December 2026 and calendar-year-2026 windows carry the full $2,994. Health care is the only component that does not apply to all households, which is why it enters only the marketplace family-of-four total.

(State figures use the same formulas with that state’s gas, utility, and ACA inputs; the tariff component is identical in every state.)

The votes

The authors tracked the recorded floor votes in the 119th Congress, where members had a direct, on-the-record chance to stop or enable each of the four cost drivers — final-passage votes, disapproval resolutions, war-powers resolutions, and the key procedural votes (rules and discharge motions) that determined whether relief could even reach the floor. The authors did not include messaging votes with no bearing on whether a cost took effect.

This yields 12 votes in the House and 19 in the Senate, grouped into the four categories.

Tariffs: Cost-up = votes to protect Trump’s tariffs.

• House: HRES 211 (rule blocking tariff-disapproval votes), HJRES 117 (table the Brazil-tariff disapproval), HRES 707 (extend the procedural block), HRES 1042 (re-extend the block), HJRES 72 (terminate the Canada tariffs — cost-up = Nay).
• Senate: SJRES 37 (Canada), SJRES 49 (global “Liberation Day”), SJRES 81 (Brazil), SJRES 77 (Canada), SJRES 88 (global) — each a resolution to terminate a tariff emergency; cost-up = Nay (or Yea to table).

Utilities: Cost-up = votes to enact OBBBA and repeal the clean-energy credits.

• House: HR 1 (final passage of OBBBA).
• Senate: HR 1 #329 (motion to proceed), HR 1 #364 (amendment to keep wind/solar credits — cost-up = Nay), HR 1 #372 (final passage).

Health care / ACA: Cost-up = votes against extending ACA enhanced premium tax credits.

• House: HRES 780 (discharge HR 1834 so an extension could reach the floor — cost-up = Nay), HR 1834 (passage of the extension — cost-up = Nay).
• Senate: HR 1 #339 (amendment to extend the credits — cost-up = Nay), S 3385 (cloture on a standalone extension — cost-up = Nay).

Gas / Iran war: cost-up = votes to continue the war in Iran.

• House: HCONRES 38, HCONRES 40, HCONRES 75, HCONRES 86 (war-powers resolutions to end hostilities — cost-up = Nay).
• Senate: nine war-powers discharge motions — SJRES 104, 118, 116, 123, 114, 184, 163, and 185 (cost-up = Nay).

Scoring

• A vote is “cost-up” when the member’s recorded position is the one that raised or sustained the cost (e.g., Yea on a rule protecting Trump’s tariffs, Nay on a resolution to end the war or extend the ACA credits).
• Cost-up % = cost-up votes ÷ votes cast. Not Voting, Present, and absences are excluded from the denominator.
• Category tagging (how votes map to dollars): a member is charged the full cost of a category if they cast at least one cost-up vote in it, and $0 if they cast none. One “good” vote does not earn a discount, and a category with zero cost-up votes is not charged at all. A member’s tagged total is the sum of the categories they triggered.
• Maximum cost-up votes per category — House: Tariffs 5, Utilities/OBBBA 1, ACA 2, Gas 4. Senate: Tariffs 5, Utilities/OBBBA 3, ACA 2, Gas 9.
• This rule applies to members of both parties (a Democrat who casts even one cost-up war-powers vote is charged the full gas cost).