WSJ poll finds bipartisan backing for price caps on drugs, credit cards, child care

Four-fifths back 10% credit-card cap; Trump’s $5,000 check plan draws under 25%

A Wall Street Journal survey of 1,500 registered voters found bipartisan support for government-imposed price caps and market interventions, with voters of all partisan stripes strongly backing limits on prescription drug costs, child-care expenses and credit-card interest rates. The poll, conducted Sept. 16-21 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, tested more than 30 policy ideas and found that 14 of 16 policies addressing living costs, healthcare access and taxation drew majority support.

The breadth of support crossed traditional partisan categories. Nearly four in five voters backed capping credit-card interest rates at 10%. The proposal has drawn bipartisan backing in Congress: progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and conservative Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) are sponsoring such legislation in the Senate, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and MAGA-aligned Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R., Fl.) among its backers, and President Trump is calling for a similar measure. Nearly three-quarters of voters supported capping child-care costs for working families, an idea backed by liberal Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.). The same share backed a government website offering discounted prescription drugs, modeled on Trump’s “Trump Rx” site.

“We love to think about the world as conservative and liberal,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who conducted the survey with Republican Adam Geller. “Maybe we should start thinking about the world as: Populism is a dominant ideology in both the Democratic and Republican parties.”

Populism has been an element of American politics for most of its history, Geller said, and some of the ideas tested in the Journal survey have long been debated. What is new, he said, is that many of these policy ideas draw bipartisan support.

The survey identified similar cross-cutting patterns on immigration and election rules. Large majorities backed both strong border security and a pathway to citizenship for many people in the country illegally. A near-majority of Democrats agreed with Republicans and independent voters that people should show photo ID at the polls to ensure that only citizens vote. Three-quarters backed restricting institutional investors from buying large numbers of single-family homes.

Many of the high-support proposals could be classified as populist — favoring consumers or average citizens over established powers such as the wealthy, health insurers and other corporations. “Every popular item that we tested in the poll has someone standing between you and a fair price,” Geller said. “These aren’t conservative or progressive issues. These are big institutions standing in the way of what voters perceive as fairness.”

For many years, the idea of government price caps or limits on corporate activity to help consumers was discussed largely on the ideological fringes of politics. Republicans have traditionally been wary of federal intervention in free markets; Trump and GOP lawmakers, for example, tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which expanded the federal role in healthcare. Democrats have traditionally favored government efforts to help people navigate the economy, but party leaders also allied with business groups to support free trade, despite opposition from many labor unions, and they turned aside calls for a government-run health system to replace private insurers as part of the ACA debate. Trump revealed the appetite for a rising strain of populism during his first run for the White House, when his agenda included ending or reworking free-trade deals and protecting Social Security and Medicare from austerity plans within his own party.

Now, high housing prices and a waning sense of economic mobility are giving more momentum to populist ideas, Anzalone said. Democrats have nominated populist, Democratic socialist candidates in several House and Senate primaries, turning aside more centrist options. “When you feel like you can’t buy a home, or you feel like you can’t get ahead, you will all of a sudden be attracted to policies you never thought you would be attracted to,” Anzalone said.

The Journal survey did not present the possible negative consequences of the proposals. A cap on credit-card interest rates could prompt finance companies to stop lending to lower-income households that carry balances. New requirements on health insurers to cover additional drugs or services could raise premiums.

Michael Strain, an economist with the center-right American Enterprise Institute, attributed the bipartisan shift to economic stresses dating to the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020 pandemic and post-pandemic inflation. Those pressures, he said, had broadened policy discussion to ideas that were once “very far outside the norm of what political leaders discussed in the past.” When conservatives become “undisciplined by the need to respect market forces,” Strain said, “they end up sounding a lot like progressive Democrats.”

The least popular ideas in the survey came from prominent figures in each major party. Trump’s proposal to send $5,000 checks to all adults if Republicans retain their congressional majorities in the midterm elections drew support from fewer than one in four voters. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open government-run grocery stores selling food at discounted prices drew 37%.

Tax increases on the wealthy drew broad but more partisan support. Two-thirds of voters would raise taxes on people earning more than $1 million per year, while a majority of Republicans rejected that idea. About 60% supported a wealth tax on billionaires; only about a third of Republicans backed that proposal. At least six states, all led by Democrats, have enacted taxes or surtaxes on million-dollar incomes, and California voters will decide this fall on imposing a billionaire wealth tax. A third taxation proposal — raising taxes on high earners to extend the solvency of the Social Security system — drew majority support from Democrats and independents, while Republicans were about evenly divided.

The survey also tested a range of other interventions. Limiting rent increases to 5% above the rate of inflation drew majority support, as did raising the federal minimum wage to $20 per hour and taxing luxury properties used as vacation or second homes.

The appetite for populist interventions coincides with low regard for both major parties. The Journal survey found both Democrats and Republicans viewed favorably by under 40% of Americans and unfavorably by nearly 60%.

Some of the proposals with strong public support have already reached Congress. A measure restricting institutional investors from buying large numbers of single-family homes passed into law this year despite Trump’s refusal to sign it; that policy drew 75% support in the Journal survey. But the survey finds that much of the public’s appetite for help from the government has been unaddressed.

Lee Drutman, who focuses on Congress and governance issues at the center-left New America think tank, said, “The puzzling thing is why neither party has figured out how to do this, given that there’s such widespread support.” One theory, he said, is that both parties avoid steps that might help the rival party claim credit with voters; proposals requiring taxpayer funding are also often expensive.

To Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster, the results are not surprising. During the 2024 election, he found that voters backed ideas such as congressional hearings and prosecutions over price gouging, a suspension of grocery taxes and a required cut in electric utility rates, and other ideas that some economists warn could carry negative effects. “Voters have no interest in entertaining the point of view of traditional political economics, because it has failed them entirely,” he said.