Congress’ Ultrarich Think They Can Sell an Affordability Agenda

Much of the responsibility for making the Republican Party’s case for President Donald Trump’s economy falls to members of Congress.

That comes with an awkward complication: Many of the highest-profile Republican members are unimaginably rich.

Members tasked with translating broad economic promises about affordability into law, while defending the results back home, are often many tax brackets removed from their constituents. The last time many of them had to skip a meal to pay the bills might have been long ago, if ever, and that can make leveling with struggling people more difficult.

“How many lawyers would you hire that were penniless? How many doctors would you hire that didn’t go to medical school?” said Rep. Darrell Issa, a retiring Republican from California who has been one of the House’s wealthiest members for years. “The selection of members of Congress is made based on wanting to pick somebody from your community that, appropriately, doesn’t represent you as a failure but represents you as a success.”

Issa said NOTUS should note in this story that he was “offended” by the suggestion that millionaires, who are overrepresented in Congress when compared to America’s broader population, are overrepresented in Congress.

“Being in touch with the voters is not insulated simply because you have some wealth,” Issa continued. “If you have to fly these shitty airlines back and forth in coach every week, getting upgraded when you’re lucky and waiting in long lines, you’re not out of touch with voters.”

Issa’s argument that Americans often view a politician’s wealth as a measure of competence is not new. Trump took up a similar tactic to reach office.

And this year, his administration signaled repeatedly that it would approach economic issues with laser-eyed focus, even deploying Trump on a cross-country tour to talk about his party’s affordability agenda. But his penchant for tariffs and a war that’s disrupted the global oil supply has created market volatility and raised the cost of living at a time when voters’ economic frustrations have reached a fever pitch.

America’s attention toward the affordability crisis arrives at a time when Congress is in a decades-long PR crisis. Only a quarter of Americans held a favorable view of Congress as of 2023, a figure that has tumbled since the mid-2000s, when the institution saw 53% favorability, according to the Pew Research Center.

Those negative perceptions are largely driven by the idea that politicians are bought and paid for and only look out for their own, Navigator Research, a progressive research firm, found in a poll conducted early this year. Working-class voters in battleground states largely echoed these sentiments in focus groups the firm ran late last year.

A whopping 80% of Americans, according to Navigator’s polling, said they believe their elected officials are unable to get anything done because they’re too focused on enriching themselves and their donors. And 77% said elected officials are too out of touch with, and don’t understand, the struggles of average people.

“Americans don’t feel like any politicians really ‘get it.’ Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and can no longer afford basic necessities like gas and groceries — and they can tell that politicians as a whole aren’t experiencing the same day-to-day struggles they are,” said Maryann Cousens, Navigator’s senior manager of polling and analytics, in an email.

“If someone can show they have an understanding of the daily struggles of normal people, then they’ll have significantly more credibility when promoting an affordability agenda,” Cousens continued.

Anat Shenker-Osorio, a progressive consultant who attends panels with disaffected voters, said Americans are becoming more conscious of the class differences between them and their representation in Congress: “If we’re not at pitchforks, we’re kind of close to that,” Shenker-Osorio said.

“We see over and over again, this desire among politicians and electeds to present themselves as ‘the dude you can have a beer with,’ and when they live in a gated mansion and belong to a country club and so on, it’s a little hard to pull that off,” Shenker-Osorio said. “The other piece of it is that [voters] don’t like the idea — and they increasingly are very aware — that money buys influence and buys decision-making that goes against working people.”

The counterargument is that a politician’s wealth can work in their favor on the campaign trail — depending on how they got it.

One Republican campaign operative told NOTUS that many wealthy politicians with business backgrounds have found success connecting with working-class voters and unions by leaning into that while campaigning, arguing that they created jobs in their districts or states.

Still, as the midterms inch closer and gas prices reach higher, messaging about the economy in a way that doesn’t further anger America’s already-peeved consumers might get even harder for wealthy politicians.

Pain at the pump, which Trump has said may not let up or even get worse this year, usually spells panic for elected officials because it hands the out-of-power party an opportunity for political attacks. Many Democrats have already taken to holding press conferences at gas stations to highlight gas prices hitting $4 a gallon due to the Iran war’s oil-market disruptions.

While Democrats can point to the numbers and note that they’re not the ones running the ship, Republicans have to message around the disruptions and offer solutions. Americans’ frustrations have forced the wealthiest Republican senator to admit that many view the institution his party leads as out of touch.

“This place is starving, and I don’t mean this egotistically, but it is starving for somebody that will talk to the people like I talk to the people,” said Sen. Jim Justice, the Republican. “What this place needs, so badly, are people with just a lot of everyday people that are grounded in what they do, common sense, logic and reason. We need that really bad.”

Justice said, despite his wealth, there’s “nothing hoity-toity” about his lifestyle. He does still fly his private jet home nearly every day — because finding a place in the District of Columbia, he said, was “really, really, really expensive.” He added that he “downgraded” the jet to save some money.

For other wealthy politicians, addressing people’s economic concerns has led to some faux pas this year. Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio said that impoverished people are “not very experienced at navigating the real world,” and that “you literally have to teach people how to budget.” Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith drew fire for suggesting that Americans who can’t afford beef “have so many proteins to choose from.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is ready to use comments like those to portray Republicans as “out of touch” ahead of the midterms, spokesperson Maeve Coyle told NOTUS in an email.

“Republican Senate candidates are mocking voters over their concerns about rising costs,” Coyle said. “In November, voters will hold them accountable.”

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee blamed Democrats and touted Republicans’ reconciliation package as an improvement to the status quo.

“The Democrat Party drove costs of living up across every sector of the economy under Joe Biden and poured fuel on the fire time and again,” spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement. “Republicans gave American working families the largest tax cut in history and has gone after the waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars that happened on Democrats’ watch.”

Some of the lawmakers leading the Republicans’ charge to focus on working families inhabit an entirely different financial reality: Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma entered the House in 2018 with a median net worth of $61 million, and that figure has ballooned since he took office. He announced his candidacy for Senate in March — and if successful, he would be one of the chamber’s many millionaires. He didn’t think that wealthy lawmakers are at odds with Americans’ economic frustrations.

“There are very wealthy Democrats up here, too. And so I’m not critical of them either. I think that if they had done something illegal, they’d be in jail. They worked hard. There are some who have inherited it, obviously, but that’s very few as well,” Hern told NOTUS. “People want to see everyday Americans up here. They don’t want to see über-wealthy people up here. We all get elected. Nobody puts themselves here.”

“I think people need to respect the idea that it’s the greatest nation that’s ever existed for people to take advantage of the opportunity — the guaranteed opportunity, not the guaranteed outcomes,” Hern added.

Some rich Democrats on the campaign trail have found ways to neutralize wealth-related criticism by setting themselves apart from their economic class.

Take Tom Steyer, a billionaire largely bankrolling his own campaign to be California’s next governor. He’s positioned himself as “the billionaire who will take on the billionaires.”

And Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a billionaire, often repeats that “people like me should pay more and people like you should pay less.”

Both frame their wealth as a tool for political independence because they don’t have to rely on money from corporate PACs or wealthy donors.

Some wealthy Democrats in Congress said they work to navigate the optics of their affluence, like Rep. April McClain Delaney of Maryland, who is personally wealthy but represents impoverished communities in the outstretch of Appalachia that reaches into her district.

“The hardest part is that people feel like the system is rigged against them. Unless you have access to capital, it’s rigged against them. And so, I say, listen, we can refashion and remake America fit for purpose,” McClain Delaney said. “I don’t say ‘fit for purpose’ to them, but I say we can make it work for people.”