A promise broken on day one
In August 2024, Trump said, "When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One." America is still waiting. Overall, inflation is a sticky 3%. In particular, citizens are paying 11% more for electricity than they did on Trump's first day. Now, unpayable utility bills have left many Americans in the dark. In the world's richest country, as the days get shorter, some hardworking people live without light. How this makes America Great Again is unexplained.
Americans suffer the consequences
The Washington Post puts a human face on this national disgrace in a piece titled, "More Americans are getting their power shut off, as unpaid bills pile up." The subhead explains the rise in delinquencies: Average electricity costs have risen 11 percent since January, more than three times the rate of inflation. "For the first time, we're behind on all of our utilities," one Ohioan said.
The paper reports on one victim of the surge in the price of electricity:
Anthony Ponce, who lives in Pasadena, California, had his electricity disconnected in early October after falling months behind on his bill. Ponce makes $26 an hour working at Trader Joe's but says almost all of that goes toward his $1,900 rent for the one-bedroom apartment he shares with his two children.
The situation is worse for those eager to work but who have lost a job. WaPo reports on a family whose wounds were salted by Republican indifference.
Misty Pellew's family lived in the dark for several days this month.
Pellew's power was shut off Nov. 13 because of $602 in unpaid bills, the latest in a string of financial humiliations that began six months ago after her husband lost his $20-an-hour excavation job in northeastern Pennsylvania. The recent government shutdown dealt another blow, delaying federal funding for programs that helped the family pay for food and utilities.
There is no national data on electrical shutoffs. However, an analysis of utility disconnections in 11 states by the Washington Post and the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) shows an increase in shutoffs in at least 8 of them. In New York City alone, residential shutoffs are up five times over a year ago.
Jim Chilsen, speaking for the Citizens Utility Board, an advocacy group for consumers in Chicago, said the number of people calling with disconnection notices has risen 70 percent since last year. He added there was "intense consumer pain over power bills."
Mark Wolfe, an energy economist and executive director of NEADA, explains that the victims of the price hike are increasingly those who thought they were comfortably off.
"With prices going up so rapidly, electricity is becoming unaffordable in many parts of the country. And it isn't just lower-income households anymore; it's spilling into the middle class."
An administration lost in the dark
Trump lives in Orwell’s imagination. This past master of doublethink both denies there is a problem to be solved and claims he has an easy solution. He congratulates himself on his non-existent victory over inflation. “I want people to recognize a great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability, because we brought prices way down.” And he claims the panacea for utility price hikes is more coal.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement,
"By adopting President Trump's commonsense energy dominance agenda, blue states could lower the price of electricity, gasoline, transportation, and manufacturing. The key to grid stability and affordable energy is unleashing reliable sources of power like coal, natural gas, and nuclear."
Rogers may have enjoyed getting his dig in against blue states. But while his partisan slur was SOP in this administration, it was divorced from reality. (Making it doubly typical for the Trump crowd.) The fact is that energy prices are rising fastest in Trump states (see map below).
As for the claim that "Drill baby, drill" will cure all ills, Trump has no record of living by his own admonitions. During his first term, US electrical production declined. In contrast, it increased under Biden. I'll grant you that is a simplistic stat — and that the economics and technology behind energy production are both complex and arcane.
However, to say that Republicans are better on energy than Democrats will need more substantial support than just wishing it were so. And hoping the base accepts your verbal flatulence as solid evidence.
Even if the US were to up its fossil fuel extractions, what use is generating more energy if you can't deliver it? The US power grid is fragmented and fragile. The rise of AI and its enormous energy demands are overstraining it. And yet Republicans are notoriously bad on infrastructure.
Political money is the root of all evil
In addition, the antipathy toward alternative energy is more informed by political contributions from fossil fuel companies than by a careful appraisal of the benefits the cutting-edge and inevitable technology provides. This political consideration is doomed to relegate the US to also-ran status in an industry China already dominates, one guaranteed to generate profits pleasing to even the most avaricious capitalist.
Trumpism is a philosophy that, like mainstream economics, can be divided into big and small spheres. In micro-trumponomics, it is the individual who gets hurt. In macro-trumponomics, it is the entire country.
In this administration, the darkness is not just metaphorical.
