There’s a certain feeling when you’ve been sick for so long you’ve forgotten what healthy feels like. You stop noticing the fatigue, the sluggishness, the way everything costs just a little more than it should. Then one morning, something’s different. The fog is lifting.

For four years, the Biden administration treated the economy like a teenager with dad’s credit card—spending recklessly and assuming someone else would handle the mess. The damage? Mortgage payments on a median home doubled. Real weekly wages fell four percent. Native-born Americans lost jobs while employment gains went entirely to foreign workers. Debt servicing costs exploded 117 percent. All those “stimulus” checks just meant everyone was bidding up prices on the same goods, robbing working families blind.

The cruel irony: the spending made headline numbers look healthy. GDP appeared fine because every borrowed dollar counts as “activity.” But it was cancerous growth, not prosperity. Washington was running a fever and calling it cardio.

President Trump understood you don’t cure cancer with more of what caused it.

From E.J. Antoni, Chief Economist at the Heritage Foundation:
Last year, President Donald Trump’s economic agenda was like a shock treatment of chemotherapy to kill the cancer of Bidenomics. The Trump administration has slashed more than a quarter million government bureaucrats, cutting the federal workforce to its lowest level in more than a decade. The deficit is down 27% from this time in the previous fiscal year.

The treatment wasn’t comfortable. Cutting federal jobs dragged down payroll numbers. Reduced spending made GDP look weaker. The media howled predictably. But Trump resisted the temptation to print money and hire bureaucrats just to juice the numbers. Imagine that—a politician thinking past the next headline.

Signs of life

Now the results are undeniable. American paychecks buy 1.6 percent more than when Biden left. Wage growth hit 4.1 percent, outpacing inflation at 2.7 percent. When’s the last time your raise actually meant something at the grocery store?

Here’s what really matters: all net job growth over twelve months went to native-born Americans. Every bit from the private sector—not government bloat. The July 2025 tax reforms eliminated taxes on tips and overtime. Deregulation savings could exceed $10,600 per family. Even housing is thawing, with mortgage payments down nearly five percent.

The year ahead

I’ll admit—there were moments the medicine seemed worse than the disease. Watching legacy media celebrate “disappointing” jobs reports while ignoring the rot underneath Biden’s numbers was maddening. But here’s the thing about conservative economics: it works even when it’s not politically convenient.

The Bidenomics cancer isn’t fully gone. Affordability remains brutal, and four years of inflation won’t magically reset. But the patient is responding. The fever is breaking. And 2026? This is the year America starts feeling like herself again.

Key Takeaways

• Biden’s reckless spending caused mortgage payments to double and real wages to fall 4%.
• Trump’s “economic chemotherapy” cut 250,000 federal jobs and reduced the deficit by 27%.
• Wages now outpace inflation, and all net job growth is going to native-born Americans.
• Free-market policies are working—2026 is poised to be America’s economic comeback year.

Sources: Fox News, The Heritage Foundation