Now comes the test for Dems: household budget relief

Democrats won the midterms on voter frustration with high prices . Now they face the same problem that sank Republicans: Americans want lower prices, and there is little that policymakers can do to deliver them quickly. Why it matters: Prices for necessities like groceries and gas can fall in a healthy economy. But the kind of broad price declines that would reverse years of price gains would likely come with job losses and falling incomes, leaving households worse off than before. It sets up an early test for the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress and Democrats in statehouses across the country: delivering relief that voters can actually feel in their household budgets. What they're saying: "Can you bring prices back to 2019 levels? No," Brendan Duke, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, tells Axios. "But a lot of the price shocks are policy-induced, so there are ways that policy can reverse them." Duke points to reversing food assistance cuts, restoring health insurance subsidies and ending the Iran war as possible sources of relief, with the "big, fat asterisk" that President Trump might not sign off. Other economic problems — a potential rise in unemployment or the AI bubble bursting — could overshadow affordability without solving it, Duke says. The big picture: Democrats have limited power over sources of pressure on household budgets. Their midterm sweep helped lower oil prices through market expectations. But Trump still controls the next steps in the war, and further relief heavily depends on his next moves. Congress could vote to repeal tariffs, potentially reducing costs for imported goods and American manufacturers. But Trump could simply veto that legislation (and more generally, there is no guarantee that businesses would pass all the savings on to consumers). Plans to restore expired Affordable Care Act subsidies or reverse Medicaid cuts could hit a wall because of internal divisions or Trump's