WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will address high prices and a stubborn economy when he stops by a Pennsylvania swing county Tuesday to sell his fiscal message to the battleground state. But one key Senate ally acknowledged there’s little he can do with the stroke of a pen or single legislative plan on the issue of affordability.

Democratic lawmakers see the topic as a strategic opportunity heading into next year’s midterms, coming on the heels of key wins in the November off-year elections and an overperformance in a recent House special election in a deep-red Tennessee district. Several Democratic senators expressed surprise last week over Trump seeming to dismiss voters’ concerns about high prices by calling the issue a “hoax.”

“Just about everything is down,” the president said on Dec. 3 during an Oval Office event. “They use the word affordability. It’s a Democrat hoax. They’re the ones that drove the prices up.”

But polling shows voters disagree. According to a RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys, 62.2% disapproved of Trump’s handling of inflation, while 34.8% approved.

Among those critic is longtime Trump loyalist-turned-foe Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has publicly called out the president over the state of Americans’ collective cost of living.

“Affordability is a real issue,” the Georgia Republican told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday. Asked by reporter Leslie Stahl about Trump’s description of the issue as a hoax,” Greene replied, “It’s one of the top issues. Not only in my district, it’s across the country.”

Trump fired back Monday morning on his Truth Social platform, again referring to Greene as a “traitor.”

“Marjorie is not AMERICA FIRST or MAGA, because nobody could have changed her views so fast, and her new views are those of a very dumb person,” he said of the congresswoman, who has said she will resign from the House next month.

Before affordability became the latest Trump-Greene flash point, one Republican senator who typically votes with Trump said that when it comes to inflation and prices, any president would be forced to play the long game.

“In a macro-sense, there’s not much with a specific piece of legislation or an [executive order]. What he can do is try not to overregulate the economy. Spur as much competition in our economy as possible — that impacts prices. Stop deficit spending, which devalues our currency,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said when asked what specific actions Trump could take to lower prices.

Johnson said affordability was “an absolutely real issue” while harking back to actions that preceded Trump’s second term.

“It’s all caused by the massive deficit spending during the pandemic and after the four-year-high inflation that drove prices up. Some commodity prices, like energy, are coming down. Eggs are coming down, yeah, but nowhere to the level they were,” the Senate Budget Committee member added. “That’s the problem.”

Across the Capitol, several veteran House Democrats said their Republican colleagues appeared more worried about affordability than the president. But Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina accused House GOP leaders of resisting pressure to craft price-targeting legislation, saying they have been carrying Trump’s water at the expense of the American people.

“The speaker of the House is more interested in staying on Donald Trump’s Christmas card list than he is in making sure that millions of people” have more money in their pockets and savings accounts, McGovern said Thursday.

Clyburn also said he doubts any such measures were likely to hit the House floor. “For 10 years, I’ve heard about a plan,” he said Thursday. “Well, I’ve never seen a plan, alright?”

Speaker Mike Johnson, however, told Politico that his party was “dialed in like a laser” on the issue and that voters had not yet begun to feel the effects of the massive tax and spending law that Republicans enacted this summer.

By the middle of 2026, “there’s going to be boats rising in the economy, this is going to be a very different situation before we go into the election cycle,” Johnson told the news outlet.

Trump on Tuesday is scheduled to head to Pennsylvania’s Monroe County to make the case that his administration has a plan to tackle high prices. While Hillary Clinton narrowly carried the Northeastern Pennsylvania county in 2016 and Joe Biden won it by 7 points four years later, Trump finished ahead of Kamala Harris by less than a point last year on his way to winning the Keystone State for the second time.

The selection of battleground Monroe County could reflect an acknowledgement by the Trump team that Republicans have work to do on the affordability issue. His previous visits to Pennsylvania and other swing states for official events and rallies have largely taken place in safe red territory.

‘Out of control’

Democratic lawmakers and officials often seem surprised at Trump’s current message on affordability — or the lack of one — less than 11 months from elections that will decide control of Congress — and the fate of his remaining domestic agenda.

“His dismissing affordability as a ‘hoax’ is so patently out of touch. It speaks for itself,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Thursday. Asked if he thought Trump had learned anything from last month’s election results, the Democrat said, “No, no, he didn’t.”

“It’s pretty obvious that the American people are concerned about affordability, the cost of living, prices of electricity, food, groceries, rent — all of it out of control,” Blumenthal added.

Former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, who served as Trump’s chief of staff during his first term, said his former boss remains irked at how Republicans talk about prices.

“What he’s cranky about is the fact that some of the messaging on the Republican side isn’t where it needs to be,” Priebus said Sunday on “This Week” on ABC News. “I mean, he had the huge tax bill. Gas prices are down. Inflation, from where it was a year ago, is in a much better place, and I think it’s going to take some time for it to come around.”

“Them getting hammered on affordability is making him cranky, that’s true. But I think, all in all, he’s got a lot to be proud of,” the former RNC chair said.

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