The Levin Letter: Promised Lower Power Bills, You Got the Opposite
In August 2024, President Trump made a promise as specific as it was bold. “Energy costs, all of it, air conditioning, heating, all of it, including gasoline, will drop by more than 50% within the first 12 months,” he said at a Pennsylvania campaign stop. In North Carolina, he sharpened it: “Under my leadership, the United States will commit to the ambitious goal of slashing energy and electricity prices by half at least.” He even told voters to hold him to it. “Mark it down,” he said. “You can get very angry at me if we don’t do it.”
Well, here in our district, plenty of families marked it down, and the verdict isn’t pretty. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential electricity rates rose 18% from Trump’s January 2025 inauguration through April 2026.
Whatever your politics, this should bother you. I won’t pretend a president single-handedly sets your utility bill. But this administration made choices that made things worse, then asked you to look away.
For starters, the administration canceled clean energy projects that would have helped meet rising demand and repealed tax credits that were actually holding costs down, leaving families holding the bill. At the same time, an explosion of power-hungry AI data centers hit the grid. Monitoring Analytics, the independent market monitor for our largest regional grid, found that data centers were responsible for 63% of a recent capacity price increase, roughly $9.3 billion that gets recovered from ordinary customers in higher rates.
The administration’s own tariffs made it worse. Analysts at Morningstar found the 50% tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper drive up the cost of transformers and the grid equipment utilities need, costs that get passed to ratepayers.
And when the confrontation with Iran sent oil prices climbing, drivers felt it at the pump, because energy trades on a global market that no amount of “drill, baby, drill” can wish away.
I don’t think you send someone to Washington to make excuses. You send them to fix things. So here’s what I’m doing.
First, I’ve introduced the Energy Bills Relief Act with Rep. Sean Casten. It restores the clean energy tax credits that were keeping costs down, expands heating and cooling assistance for families through LIHEAP, helps people make their homes more efficient, and cuts the red tape blocking lower-cost power from connecting to the grid. The idea is simple: build more affordable American energy, and stop making ratepayers foot the bill for everyone else’s demand.
Second, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has asked me and Rep. Nikki Budzinski to lead a Working Group focused squarely on lowering gas and utility prices. Our charge is to assemble the strongest ideas for cutting costs and be ready to move them fast, drawing on bills that already have broad support, with input from members across the aisle wherever we can get it. When families are choosing between the electric bill and the grocery bill, this can’t be about scoring points.
There’s no magic switch that halves your bill overnight. Anyone who told you otherwise wasn’t being straight. But there is a difference between a plan that lowers costs over time and a slogan that raises them and hopes you won’t notice.
I’d rather promise less and deliver more. That’s the job. Mark it down.
By: Rep. Mike Levin
Source: Picket Fence Media