Economic relief is on the way, Democrats say. But what, how and when?

Don’t worry, cash-strapped Americans, “relief is on the way”, the senator Chuck Schumer promised last week in a press conference celebrating Democrats’ massive midterms win .

Winning candidates promised to cut food and healthcare costs, rein in corporations ripping off consumers and workers, curb billionaire power and make the world’s biggest economy better serve the working class.

There’s broad agreement on those lofty goals and on some short-term steps. But the big win is bringing decades-old battles to the fore, about how the US federal government should fund safety nets and check healthcare and food costs.

The “lame duck” period between an election and a new Congress’s swearing-in in early January is often a frenzy of behind-the-scenes battles and public posturing as corporate lobbyists, thinktanks, voter groups and big donors try to influence the agenda.

This time, it’s all that on steroids.

Already, JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, has issued a 75-page list of 200 policy proposals for Congress’s “day one agenda”; Columbia professor Tim Wu is pushing an “ affordability bill ”; Texas’s new senator James Talarico is promising universal healthcare for all ; there’s an 181-page investigation memo circulating; and moderate Democrats are arguing for more incremental steps .

Meanwhile, Trump’s power to veto bills means anything the president doesn’t like will need a clutch of Republicans to pass, making things more complicated. Expect a mix of affordability bills the president will back, like curbs on private equity and credit card interest rates, and ones he will veto, which Democrats will use for anti-Republican political messaging.

Most voters want Congress to protect social security, raise wages and lower the costs of basic necessities, healthcare and family care, a recent Equal Rights Advocates Action Fund survey found , echoing many others.

Their support for anyone in office is conditional.

“Everyone’s on notice now. This is probation and not a mandate,” Carrie Joy Grimes, the founder of WorkMoney, a non-profit that advocates for lower costs and higher wages for US workers, said of Tuesday’s election results. “People have not suddenly become Democrats. People are very clear that they want something different.”

Grimes said she’s telling the group’s millions of members: “It’s incumbent on everyday people to take what just happened and keep thumping on both parties.”

Schumer and other Democrats have pledged to end the Iran war, which has pushed up heating oil and other costs, and to end Trump’s tariffs, which cost the average household $1,110 this year .

They should move immediately, insists Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator who is exploring a 2028 presidential bid. “Democrats should not advance spending to continue to fund this war” by refusing to vote for a continuing resolution that expires in mid-December, he told the Lever . “The Vietnam war ended only when Congress defunded it,” he added.

The path for ending Trump’s tariffs is unclear; he and his cabinet have ignored links to high costs. But some congressional Republicans are now criticizing them, making the two-thirds majority needed to pass a bill without Trump a possibility.

Earlier this year, Democrats, including the Vermont senator Peter Welch, introduced a bill to end tariffs on Canadian goods that was blocked by Republicans . In the new Congress, it’s headed to the White House, Welch told CBC : “We can’t force the president to sign the legislation we put on his desk, but we can pass it in good faith.”

Democrats have promised to immediately roll back the cuts to subsidies in the Affordable Care Act and the work requirements to Medicaid that were part of the $1tn in Medicaid cuts in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Passing those changes will have to be negotiated with Trump or Republicans, and could come as part of a bigger spending package.

Many Democrats, including Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and South Carolina’s Annie Andrews , ran on pledges to upend an expensive, ineffective healthcare system that leaves millions with crushing medical debt and are pushing universal healthcare.

Again, the what and how are still unclear. New York’s Alexandria Ocasio Cortez will head a House “working group” on healthcare that will figure out what to do next, Jeffries said Wednesday in response to questions. “We’ll be having conversations as a House Democratic family,” he said.

On the Senate side, the Help committee (health, education, labor and pensions), chaired by Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, is expected to take a lead role. He’s already calling for a Medicare for All plan, and immediately for lowering the Medicare age to 55 and adding vision and dental care.

Expect revivals of the Patients Before Monopolies Act, a bipartisan bill that promises to break up big healthcare conglomerates, and bills to curb private equity’s healthcare acquisitions .

Republican states including Arkansas and Tennessee have already passed laws banning companies from owning pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers. David Joyner, the CEO of CVS Health, said Wednesday that the monopolies bill was a reason the company decided to break up.

Voters are concerned about the high cost of living, but also about Trump administration corruption and foreign policy chaos, Democrats say. They hope to tie that all together.

Likely House leader Hakeem Jeffries set up five “affordability working groups” in 2026 on issues including grocery and gas prices and childcare. He’s asked House members to try to link every investigation they do back to one of these affordability issues.

Already, sitting Congress Democrats sent out “target” letters to oil companies, airlines, tech companies, banks, grocery stores and others asking about their practices that have made life more difficult or expensive for the American consumer. They’re making plans to grill CEOs in public hearings about algorithmic pricing, executive compensation and skyrocketing corporate profits , before introducing bills to change corporate behavior.

Democrats will scrutinize “the extent to which corporations engaged with the Trump administration”, said Ronak D Desai, who heads the congressional investigations practice for the global law firm Paul Hastings. They’ll be looking for evidence that companies helped Trump or his allies in unethical ways, and then seek to tie that to affordability, he said.

Many of these target letters are not yet public, but there are public clues as to how these links could work. Maryland’s Jamie Raskin last week asked the White House to provide details about tariff carveouts for Apple and other companies that gave Trump lavish gifts, for example.

The Trump administration has fired or pushed out hundreds of workers at agencies that regulate air, water and consumer safety.

Congress can’t order them to be reinstated, but it is likely to investigate the firings and their effects on consumers’ health, safety and pocketbooks in public hearings that put budget chief Russ Vought and other Trump officials in a spotlight.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, who will run the Senate banking committee in January, created the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau after the housing meltdown of 2008 to protect consumers from financial scams. The agency’s funding has been slashed, and orders punishing companies for mistreating consumers were scrapped.

“Congress will investigate both the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the CFPB and whether companies previously subject to enforcement were now the beneficiary of any sweetheart deal,” Desai predicted.

Right now, Congress should swing for the fences, some say. Democrats need to take on “the corporate power that has hollowed out the American dream”, said Joe Van Wye, senior adviser on public policy and legislation at Washington law firm Cuneo Gilbert Flannery and LaDuca.

“I don’t think nibbling around the edges, only passing bills Trump is going to pass, is going to cut it,” Van Wye said.

Copyright for this text belongs to The Guardian.