By Michael Phillips | Maryland Bay News
The Maryland Democratic Party wants you to believe Donald Trump personally raised the price of your kid’s Trapper Keeper by 10.7 percent. On Wednesday, MDDems blasted out a graphic warning that “the average U.S. family will now spend nearly $4,000 per child for the 2026–27 school year,” captioned with a photo of the president looking appropriately glum, and a press release from party chair Steuart Pittman blaming the president’s economic agenda for the squeeze.
There’s just one problem: almost none of that $4,000 is school supplies.
What the number actually measures
“Almost none of that $4,000 is school supplies.”
The $4,000 figure comes from a joint analysis by the Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation — two progressive advocacy shops, not government statisticians — and it isn’t primarily about backpacks and glue sticks. Of that total, roughly $3,800 is the projected cost of packing a school lunch every day for the entire academic year, up about $400 from last year. The “school supply list” itself — the actual pencils, folders, and notebooks parents buy in August — rose 7.7 percent and adds up to less than $175 in new spending.
Compare that to the number that actually measures back-to-school shopping: the National Retail Federation’s annual survey, released this month, puts average K-12 spending on supplies, clothing, shoes and electronics combined at $863.86 per family — a modest 0.7 percent increase over last year, not 10.7 percent. That’s the figure retailers, not partisan messaging shops, use to plan inventory. MDBayNews flagged this discrepancy on X within hours of the party’s post, noting the Dems were “inflating a year’s worth of sandwiches into a ‘crisis.'”
“Advocacy dressed up as arithmetic.”
None of this is to say grocery and gas prices haven’t moved — they have, and this outlet has covered the causes of that elsewhere. But repackaging a full year of lunch-meat inflation as a “back-to-school” horror story, illustrated with a scowling photo of the president, is advocacy dressed up as arithmetic. It’s the kind of number that looks devastating in a tweet and falls apart the moment someone checks the source document, which — credit where due — MDDems at least linked.
If Annapolis wants to talk affordability, it can start with itself
“If Annapolis wants to talk affordability, it can start with itself.”
Here’s what actually shows up on Maryland families’ bills without needing an advocacy group’s spreadsheet: in 2025, the Democratic supermajority in Annapolis passed the largest tax-and-fee package in state history to close a self-inflicted structural deficit — more than $1.6 billion in new taxes and fees, including two new income-tax brackets, a first-in-the-nation 3 percent tax on tech and data services, a capital-gains surtax, and higher vehicle excise, title, and registration fees, plus a new $5 tire fee. House Republicans warned at the time that grocery delivery, Amazon orders, and emissions inspections would all get more expensive as a direct result — not from tariffs 400 miles away, but from votes cast in the State House.
Then there’s the power bill. BGE customers absorbed rate hikes through 2025 and into 2026, with delivery rates now roughly double what they were in 2012 and gas rates more than triple, according to the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel. Pepco is seeking a roughly 23 percent distribution-rate increase — part of a cumulative 63 percent climb since 2020 — while regulators and Montgomery County officials field complaints about bills “doubling to as much as $800 or $900” a month. Maryland’s Public Service Commission, whose members are gubernatorial appointees, and the General Assembly, which controls energy policy, own a meaningful share of that trajectory just as much as PJM’s capacity auctions do.
“The real affordability debate isn’t just about Washington—it’s also about decisions made in Annapolis.”
Senate President Bill Ferguson himself called 2025 the most difficult legislative session of his 15 years in Annapolis. That’s one word for a budget House Minority Leader Jason Buckel told colleagues on the floor would raise “taxes and fees on every single person and every single business.” It’s worth noting Democratic leaders can, and do, point to real relief in that same budget — an expanded child tax credit, more child-care scholarship funding — and that’s a fair fight to have. But it’s a different fight than blaming a distant war for a Maryland dad’s power bill.
MDDems is entitled to make the case that Washington’s policies are hurting Maryland families. Plenty of Marylanders think that’s true. But the party might have more credibility making that case if it spent a fraction as much energy explaining why the state it has run uninterrupted since 2007 — with a Democratic governor, supermajorities in both chambers, and every statewide office — has some of the fastest-rising utility bills and the largest tax increase in its history on the books at the same time. Receipts cut both ways.
“Receipts cut both ways.”
Sources: This article draws on the Maryland Democratic Party’s August 5, 2026 press release and accompanying social media graphic (mddems.org); the Groundwork Collaborative/Century Foundation analysis “As Students Head Back to School, Families Face 11% Price Hikes” (tcf.org); the National Retail Federation’s 2026 Back-to-School Survey conducted with Prosper Insights & Analytics; Maryland Matters reporting on the 2025 state budget and tax package, including “Tax cuts, increases part of Moore’s ‘growth agenda'” and “Moore signs fiscal 2026 budget with tax increases into law”; Capital News Service’s “How families might fare under Maryland’s new state budget”; the Tax Foundation’s analysis of HB 350/HB 352; reporting from The Baltimore Banner, WYPR, and WJLA on BGE and Pepco rate cases; and the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel’s summer 2025 electric rates factsheet.
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