Here are some ways CHN member organizations and others can help you find out. 

Check your tax return. Less than, say, $53,300? That puts your household in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the combined tax cuts and program cuts enacted in the Trump Big Brutal bill will cause households with incomes this low to fall behind. Those with incomes of $27,000 to $53,300 will lose $610 in 2026. Those in the top 1 percent, with incomes of $916,900 or more, will gain $66,080 in tax breaks. Over the next decade, the top 1 percent will gain about $1 trillion. 

For the bottom 40 percent, ITEP tells us that the Trump tariffs will impose costs higher than whatever tax cuts they get. 

Is the Trump economy paying off for workers without a college education? The Center for American Progress tells us that from the start of the second Trump term to this past September, 361,000 net jobs were lost for workers without college degrees, and wage growth has slowed for this group. Since the “Liberation Day” tariffs were announced in April, through September, 58,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.  

Have you been protected from increasing costs?  

A lot of people have been noticing high electric bills. The National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association released a recent report showing that the average monthly electric bill is up more than 29 percent since 2021, the highest in 10 years. Home heating costs are projected to rise 9.2 percent this winter because of surging electric and natural gas prices and colder-than-average temperatures. NEADA estimates that one in six U.S. households is behind on energy bills, and as many as four million households could face power shutoffs in 2025, nearly 500,000 more than last year. How much does the Trump administration care about these households? In its budget for FY26, it proposed to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) altogether. Congress has not agreed so far, but funding has declined from $6.1 billion in FY 2023 to $4 billion in FY 2025, and serves only 17 percent of eligible households. 

What’s happening to your health care costs? If you don’t get insurance through your employer but are among the 24 million who have been insured through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, your insurance costs are skyrocketing because of the failure of the Trump administration and Congress to come to agreement over extending the enhanced premium tax credits that are expiring at the end of 2025. According to Families USA, rates for individual marketplace coverage are rising 26 percent. But it’s the combination of increasing rates and drastically reduced tax credits that will result in millions of people having to drop insurance altogether. So far, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress show no evidence of caring about people who responded to CHN’s request for stories about the impact if the ACA enhanced premium tax credits expire. Some painful examples (with typo’s corrected): 

Oro Valley, AZ: ACA healthcare insurance was our last hope for my wife and I following my layoff in the slowing trucking industry due to Trump’s tariff demands.
The ACA rates more than TRIPLED for our particular situation so we obviously have no health insurance coverage until I find new employment.
My wife is 75, I am 70. 

Omaha, NE: I’m a 64-year-old woman who recently lost my job due to a reduction in force. My husband is a retired minister and qualifies for Medicare. While I was employed, my ACA health insurance cost was just under $300 a month.
Now, without the tax credits, my ACA premium will jump to $950 a month. I have several health issues, so going without insurance isn’t an option. 

Los Altos, CA: I am self-employed and unmarried so I buy my own health insurance via ACA and Covered California. I’ve been paying $700 a month which is already steep, and I got a notice that it will now double to $1400 a month. This is not ok. 

Sarasota Springs, NY: My personal insurance above Medicare went up 17% so I now pay $5,600 for a single old person. Worse than that a small plastic bottle of drops went from $47 to over $700 for a tiny bottle. It stops me from going blind. So much for pharmaceutical companies.

President Trump has complained that the ACA just hands money to insurance companies, and that it would be better to give the money to individuals directly. Republicans in Congress have proposed providing individuals with contributions to health savings accounts (about $1,000 – $1,500 proposed). That’s supposed to give a leg up to people who then can add money to the HSA’s in hopes of being able to afford their medical bills. Some of the downsides to this plan: (1) HSA’s cannot be used to pay for premiums, so people with the lowest incomes will still be closed out of any insurance; (2) people who choose plans with lower premiums but higher deductibles and cost-sharing will quickly find the amount in their health savings account will not come close to covering what they owe. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that most of the people (8 out of 10) enrolled in marketplace insurance plans have incomes less than $47,000. Only 4 percent of people with incomes below $50,000 make health savings account contributions now, because they don’t have enough money to put away in any kind of savings account. Does the Trump administration care about the huge bills they will incur if they sign up for insurance that covers much less? It doesn’t seem like it. 

Have you complained that you would never use the math lessons inflicted on you in school? Well, dust one off now: President Trump bragged that he was lowering the cost of prescription drugs by “400, 500, and even 600 percent.” If he got a 100 percent reduction, the drugs would cost nothing. Beyond that, we’re in an alternative universe where pharmaceutical companies pay patients multiples of the cost of the drug. It does appear that the administration is negotiating to lower drug prices – we’ll have to see how many are helped, and how many turn out to be the drug companies themselves. 

For the lowest income people, the deepest cuts are yet to come: the Big Brutal bill will cut Medicaid harshly, with estimates of 16 million or more expected to lose Medicaid coverage. 

Are you paying less for food? No – most estimates show an increase in food costs ranging from 2.6 percent to 3 percent in the past year. Polling cited by Groundwork Collaborative showed 79 percent of people with incomes of $100,000 or less saying that food was getting less affordable. Does the Trump administration care? It didn’t seem to, as the Food Research and Action Center noted, during the government shutdown, when it refused to distribute funding for SNAP nutrition assistance to 42 million people despite court orders. SNAP is facing more unprecedented cuts because of the Big Brutal bill, reducing or eliminating benefits for millions of people. 

Are you paying less for housing? Again, no. Going back to the Groundwork-cited polling, close to three-quarters of people with incomes under $100,000 say housing prices are getting less affordable. Housing supply is inadequate for most income levels, but, as the National Low Income Housing Coalition points out, it is especially grim for poverty-level households, where there is a shortage of 7.1 million rental homes for households this poor. Despite this, the Trump budget proposed to make drastic cuts to rental subsidies, and the House Republican housing budget would cut $1.5 billion from public housing, threatening eviction for 230,000 low-income households and would cut $770 million from the section 8 rental voucher program, which, according to House Appropriations Committee Democrats, is $3 billion less than what is needed to prevent 140,000 households from being evicted. 

As we come to the end of 2025, the Trump administration is working on many fronts to deny worker rights. They are trying to take unions away from federal workers. They want to reverse minimum wage and other rights for home care workers. They are detaining and deporting immigrant workers in ways that shock the conscience and also damage our economy. It has been the M.O. of the Trump administration to attack immigrants, blaming them for the economic problems facing the U.S. now. They hope we will be distracted from the gigantic gains of the rich and surging corporate wealth at everyone else’s expense. Groups like NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice are using clear language to show who’s winning and who’s losing – even creating a little do-it-yourself “zine” with key facts – and a return to core values:  

“No matter the color of our skin or where we come from, we all want good food on the table, affordable health care, and to live in safety. 

“We are coming together to build a future where all of us can thrive.” 

The Coalition on Human Needs looks forward to making 2026 a year in which we join with all of our members and allies to build that future for all of us, and to demand that our leaders stop putting themselves and their ultra-rich cronies first, at our expense.