In his November 2025 telephone town hall, Rep. Nicholas Langworthy (R-NY23), who represents a sprawling district covering parts of Western New York and the Southern Tier, openly acknowledged an ongoing affordability crisis gripping American families. This admission came in response to a constituent’s question and stands in stark contrast to President Trump’s repeated dismissals of affordability as a Democratic hoax.
The town hall, which Langworthy claimed attracted around 7,000 participants, included a caller named Melanie who pressed the congressman on the topic in a sometimes contentious exchange. The transcript available on YouTube, captures the back-and-forth:
Melanie: My question is on the affordability crisis. … President Trump has said that we don’t have an affordability crisis. Do you agree?
Langworthy: No. We’ve had an affordability crisis in this country long before President Trump came back into the White House, and it’s not solved. The value of our dollar got deflated during COVID. The government printed seven trillion dollars in money that it borrowed, and the purchasing power of every American was depleted.
Langworthy: And no, we have an affordability crisis in this country. And it doesn’t get fixed in nine, ten months of a new administration. And it doesn’t, you know, something that you dug this big a hole in that short of amount of time is not going to get fixed in short order.
Melanie: But prices have increased drastically under President Trump.
Langworthy: They actually have not. Prices and inflation has cooled, and pretty much every metric will show you that.
Melanie: I disagree.
Langworthy: …the inflation that’s taken… Well, then you’re going to tell me what you thought of the inflation under the last president.
Melanie: That was caused by COVID, which didn’t get wrangled in right away like it should have.
Langworthy: Well COVID … then, then the whole world got it wrong. COVID… we spent money that we had no business spending. We printed money and threw money at topics and conversations that had nothing to do with pandemic. All in the name of an emergency. And in both administrations that handled COVID made mistakes.
Langworthy: But, but you know, the Inflation Reduction Act and all of that explosive spending certainly dug this hole.
Melanie: …President Trump send out $2,000 checks to everybody?
Langworthy: Did I not say that both administrations got it wrong?
Melanie: And what are you going to do about the tariff problem?
Langworthy: What problem, what problem specifically?
Melanie: The tariffs. The tariffs have driven up costs for everybody for just about everything.
Langworthy: What specifically has a tariff driven up the cost of in your daily life?
Melanie: Lumber.
Langworthy: You buy a lot of lumber?
Melanie: I’m involved in a business that people are buying a lot of lumber. Yes.
Langworthy: Okay. I have advocated that we should have a better bilateral, not trilateral, tariff agreement with Canada. Canada doesn’t seem to want to get a deal done. That’s the biggest problem, and that’s where a lot of our lumber is imported from…
Langworthy’s acknowledgment, “No. We’ve had an affordability crisis”, marks a significant departure from usual support for President Trump. In recent weeks, Trump has downplayed and outright rejected the notion of an affordability crisis, often labeling it a Democratic invention or “hoax” while insisting his policies are rapidly resolving any issues from the prior administration.
For example, in his December 2, 2025, Cabinet Meeting, Trump referred to affordability concerns as a “fake narrative” and “Democrat scam,” arguing his administration had inherited the worst inflation in history but had already stopped it. (NB. The worst inflation since WWII was ~14.8% in March 1980 during the “Great Inflation” of the 1970s-early 1980s, driven by oil shocks and loose monetary policy.)
In his December 9, 2025, event at Mount Airy Casino Resort, Trump said, “They always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.” Trump claimed prices were “coming down very substantially” and dismissed Democratic focus on the issue as misleading voters into thinking his administration bore responsibility for high costs.
The November 2025 Elections
The affordability crisis proved decisive in the November 2025 off-year elections. Democratic candidates capitalized on voter frustration over pocketbook issues, securing major victories in New York City (Zohran Mamdani defeating Andrew Cuomo to become mayor), New Jersey (Mikie Sherrill elected governor), and Virginia (Abigail Spanberger becoming the state’s first female governor).
Despite Langworthy’s claim that, “…Prices and inflation has cooled, and pretty much every metric will show you that,”the metrics show that prices are higher this year compared to last:
- Groceries are up roughly 2.7–3.1% year-over-year (USDA Food Price Outlook 2025)
- Electricity bills are rising over 10% in some periods (BLS regional data, 2025)
- Ground beef is around 14% higher than in December 2024
- Median asking rent nationwide is up 4.8% year-over-year (Redfin/Realtor.com, Nov 2025)
- Eggs are up 38% year-over-year (BLS CPI, November 2025)
- Used car prices are up 6.2% since January 2025 (Manheim Index)
- Home heating oil in the Northeast is up 18% from last winter (EIA December 2025 forecast)
- The average health insurance premium for a family plan is up 7–9% for 2025 (Kaiser Family Foundation)
- Gasoline national average is 12% higher than December 2024 (AAA daily averages)
- Child care costs rose another 5.4% nationwide in 2025 (U.S. Treasury/ChildCare Aware)
While Langworthy wrongly claims that “prices and inflation has cooled” (NB 2.7% in November 2024 and 3.0% in September 2025), he isn’t alone among Republicans in breaking with Trump over the issue of affordability.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), up for re-election next year (2026), said, “In my state of West Virginia, a lot of people are still having trouble making ends meet.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, up for re-election in 2030 (R-MO), said, “It’s not enough to fix the message: Republicans can only improve their standing by delivering real results to lower costs and grow wages.”
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), up for re-election next year (2026) said, “Affordability is such a crisis in this country right now… Doing nothing is not an option.”
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Montana, and disgraced former Secretary of the Interior), up for re-election next year (2026) said, “Our (Trump) economy is not great.”
There’s a growing rift within the GOP as politicians stake out their own paths to re-election next year. As many as 60 House seats could flip from Republican to Democrat in next year’s midterm elections giving control of at least the House back to Democrats.
Also in his November town hall, Langworthy brushed off another affordability issue: the skyrocketing cost of health insurance premiums for thousands of people in his district. With the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expiring at the end of 2025, many families in NY-23 face unaffordable health insurance premiums. Langworthy dismissed this coming crisis as affecting too few people in his district to be of much concern to him, even though its thousands of people.
“Now, I checked in early on this enhanced premium tax credits, and I pulled the numbers for our district. There’s only 7/10th of 1% of our constituents that actually get the enhanced premium tax credits. So you know, this wasn’t a prolific, you know, situation for our community as the other side was really trying to portray it to be.”
0.7% of about 750,000 people in NY23 equals over 5000 people.
We’ll dive deeper into what he actually said on this—and the real-world fallout—in the next post.
