With just under 50 days until the midterms, the free-market advocacy group Club for Growth is circulating a new memo to Republican lawmakers arguing that the party’s winning message on affordability should center on shrinking government, not doling out subsidies.
The materials, distributed Friday, include a two-page strategy memo and an accompanying 76-page policy packet sent to Capitol Hill offices. Their central argument: voters are no longer interested in whether inflation has slowed on paper, but why prices for everyday goods remain permanently elevated.
“Americans are not asking whether the inflation rate has slowed; they are asking why the same basket of goods is permanently more expensive,” the memo states, adding that “government made core costs higher through deficit spending, subsidies, mandates, and restrictions on supply.”
The group is encouraging Republicans to link today’s high cost of living to the rapid expansion of federal spending during the pandemic under the Biden administration, framing affordability as fundamentally a story of government overreach rather than a temporary economic cycle.
A free-market prescription
Rather than proposing new government programs to offset high prices, the memo pushes what it calls “structural cost relief” — a mix of spending cuts, deregulation, and expanded domestic production.
“The free-market answer is structural cost relief: spend less, build more, produce more energy, make healthcare compete, let workers earn, and let families choose,” the memo says.
The document explicitly warns Republicans against embracing subsidies as a fix, pointing to Affordable Care Act premium tax credits — which expired at the start of this year — as an example of government aid that GOP lawmakers have long blamed for driving healthcare costs upward in the first place.
“Subsidies and regulation function as a back door for government control and involvement in private industry,” the memo argues. “The only way to address the affordability crisis properly is to undo misguided government intervention and stop pretending more of the same will suddenly work.”
Potential friction with Trump’s $5,000 pledge
That anti-subsidy framing could create tension with President Donald Trump, who has promised every American adult a $5,000 payment if Republicans hold the midterms. According to Fox News Digital, several GOP lawmakers contacted last week were noncommittal about embracing that proposal.
Policy specifics
The packet lays out sector-by-sector recommendations for lawmakers to campaign on:
- Social Security: The memo calls for reform of the program’s age requirements and other rules, citing long-standing warnings from fiscal hawks that the system is headed toward insolvency.
- Housing: Rather than subsidizing existing housing costs, the memo urges lawmakers to target land-use and building regulations to increase supply.
- Energy: It calls for expanding domestic energy production, including nuclear power, in line with the Trump administration’s energy agenda, as an alternative to Democratic net-zero emissions goals.
- Childcare: Instead of proposals for free early childcare, the memo recommends easing regulations it describes as costly without clear safety benefits, while preserving core health and safety standards.
On childcare rules specifically, the memo states: “Health and safety training in specific areas, adherence to building, fire, and health codes, and comprehensive background checks, including fingerprinting, are reasonable. However, strict and complex rules about work-child ratios, rigid staffing mandates, and regulations on facility specifications, including equipment requirements and zoning classifications, increase operating costs without demonstrable improvements in child wellbeing.”
With control of both the House and Senate at stake, and affordability shaping up as the dominant issue of the campaign, the memo represents an attempt to give Republican candidates a unified, ideologically consistent answer to Democratic attacks on the cost of living — one rooted in rolling back government’s footprint rather than expanding it.
