Read the Bill
Every month, a bill shows up at your house. It doesn’t care who you voted for. It just tells you what things cost.
Let’s read the bill together. Not the speeches. Not the ads. Just the numbers.
We start back in 2016. That’s our starting line.
In 2016, a gallon of gas ran a little over two dollars on average. You could fill a pickup and still have change left from a fifty.
Today, the national average is about four dollars and thirty-seven cents. That’s double. And this September set the all-time record for September at the pump.
Not a record for a bad week. A record for the whole month.
A year ago, gas was three dollars and sixteen cents. In twelve months, it jumped more than a dollar a gallon.
Now let’s look at the house.
In 2016, a thirty-year mortgage ran about three and a half percent. A young couple could look at a starter home and do the math without getting sick.
This past week, that rate hit seven point two eight percent. That’s the highest it’s been since 2023. It went up six weeks in a row.
That rise alone has added more than two hundred dollars a month to the payment on a regular house. Two hundred dollars. Every month. For thirty years.
That’s not a number on a chart. That’s a car payment. That’s groceries for a family. That’s the difference between buying a home and renting forever.
Now the big one.
In 2016, the national debt was about twenty trillion dollars. That was already a number nobody could picture.
On August eighteenth of this year, it crossed forty trillion for the first time. It doubled in ten years.
And in just the last twelve months, it went up two point four trillion dollars. That’s not ten years of spending. That’s one year.
Every dollar of that debt is owed by us. By our kids. By grandkids who aren’t born yet.
Paychecks have gone up since 2016 too. For a lot of ordinary things, wages have mostly kept pace over ten years.
But they haven’t kept pace with the two things that matter most to a working family. The roof over your head, and the gas that gets you to work. Those ran away from the paycheck.
And here’s something else. A lot of this gas spike came when the fight with Iran pushed oil prices up this year. That’s real. But wars don’t start themselves. Somebody makes the first move. And whoever holds the office owns how it goes.
That’s the rule I keep coming back to. Every chain starts with one act. Find the first act, and you find who answers for it.
The last two years are this man’s chain. His signature. His orders. His tariffs on the things we buy. His decisions on the world stage.
And the bill is what came out the other end.
It’s one of the oldest patterns in American politics.
In the middle of a president’s term, voters get a chance to talk back. And almost every time since World War Two, the president’s party has lost seats in the House. Only twice in all those years did it go the other way.
Why? Because a midterm is a report card. People look at their lives and ask one question. Is it better or worse than two years ago?
Read the bill again. Gas, up more than a dollar in a year. Mortgage rates, up a full point and climbing. Debt, past forty trillion. Prices rising faster than they were.
Better or worse?
You already know the answer. You pay it every month.
That’s why I believe these midterms are going to run blue. Not because of a speech. Not because of an ad. Because of the bill.
People can argue about a lot of things. They can argue about a candidate’s words. They can argue about the news.
But it’s hard to argue with your own gas receipt. It’s hard to argue with a mortgage quote. Those numbers come to your kitchen table whether you watch the news or not.
Don’t vote on what anybody tells you. Not me. Not a politician. Not a machine.
Pull out your own bills. Look at what you paid two years ago. Look at what you pay now.
Then ask who made the first move. And ask who’s answering for it.
That’s not politics. That’s bookkeeping.
And come November, the bill comes due.
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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
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