Cost of Living & Economic Security
PROPOSED / DRAFT — COST OF LIVING & ECONOMIC SECURITY
Stable prices are a basic responsibility of national economic policy. Persistent inflation functions like a hidden tax, falls hardest on households with the least financial cushion, weakens wages and savings, and makes long-term planning more difficult.
Major fiscal, tax, tariff, subsidy, monetary, and regulatory proposals should disclose their expected effects on inflation, public debt, wages, savings, and ordinary household costs. Emergency programs should include clear limits, review dates, and an exit plan.
Policy should expand the supply of housing, reliable energy, transportation, healthcare competition, food, and domestically produced essential goods. Government should enforce existing laws against fraud, price fixing, collusion, and deceptive pricing while avoiding rules that unnecessarily reduce supply or competition. Broad price controls that create shortages or conceal underlying supply problems should be avoided.
Public cost estimates should identify who pays, who benefits, how long a program lasts, and the likely effect on working families, seniors, small businesses, and taxpayers. Proposed solutions should be measured against real household expenses rather than political slogans.
Federal tax brackets, standard deductions, and major income-tested thresholds should be reviewed for timely inflation indexing so ordinary wage adjustments do not create unintended tax increases or sudden benefit losses.
Monetary policy should pursue durable price stability with transparent reasoning and public accountability. Short-term political convenience should not override the long-term value of Americans’ wages and savings.
SPECIFIC ACTIONS
Government should review barriers that unnecessarily restrict housing construction, energy supply, transportation capacity, healthcare competition, domestic production, and resilient food and supply networks. Permitting should have clear requirements and decision schedules while preserving legitimate safety, environmental, property-rights, and due-process protections.
Competition authorities should prioritize provable price fixing, collusion, market allocation, bid rigging, fraud, and exclusionary conduct. Subsidies and tariffs should identify their expected consumer cost, duration, beneficiaries, performance conditions, and exit plan.
INFLATION, FUEL & HOUSEHOLD PRICING
MPA opposes broad price controls. Government should address the cause of rising prices, including supply shortages, excessive public spending, monetary instability, taxes, regulatory barriers, market concentration, collusion, and deliberate manipulation.
Household Cost Accountability
Every major federal spending, tax, tariff, subsidy, or regulatory proposal with a projected annual economic effect of at least $10 billion should include a public estimate of its likely effect on inflation, household purchasing power, energy, housing, food, transportation, and the federal debt before final passage or adoption.
The estimate should identify who is expected to pay, who receives the benefit, when the cost begins, how long it lasts, and what evidence will be used to determine whether the policy worked.
When actual costs materially exceed the published estimate, the responsible agency should issue a correction report and a specific plan to reduce the cost rather than quietly changing the baseline.
Gasoline and Energy Prices
A national weekly fuel-price dashboard should separately report crude-oil costs, refining margins, transportation and distribution costs, retail margins, federal taxes, state and local taxes, regional supply constraints, refinery outages, and emergency measures affecting the price paid by drivers.
Credible evidence of refinery coordination, artificial supply withholding, price fixing, market allocation, or manipulation should trigger the investigation and enforcement process stated in the Consumer Rights and Investigations policies.
A high price by itself is not proof of a crime. Enforcement must distinguish unlawful coordination from legitimate changes in crude prices, transportation costs, seasonal fuel requirements, disasters, war, refinery capacity, and ordinary supply and demand.
Government should expand lawful domestic energy and refining capacity, modernize transportation infrastructure, and decide complete permit applications on a published schedule while preserving legitimate safety, environmental, property-rights, and due-process protections.
Core MPA standard: Lower costs through honest competition, adequate supply, transparent government, and punishment of proven manipulation, not blanket price controls that create shortages or conceal the underlying problem.
WHAT WE WILL MEASURE
Public reporting should track housing, food, energy, transportation, healthcare, and insurance costs; real wages and household purchasing power; supply and vacancy measures; market concentration; permitting time; program cost; and whether adopted policies produced the promised effect.
Related policies: Taxes; Workers’ Rights; Consumer Rights; Healthcare; Energy; Owner Rights; Federal Reserve Governance & Monetary Policy.
Status: Proposed / Draft — not yet formally adopted.
Originally published: August 24, 2026.
Last updated: September 26, 2026.
Version: Draft 0.6.