Before Voting, Demand the Receipts

THE FXBG ADVANCE WEDNESDAY 9/23/26 AFTERNOON READ

By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST

Soap So/Unsplash

President Donald Trump will take the stage this fall to campaign for Republican candidates. He will tell voters that those candidates deserve to win because they support his agenda, protect his policies, and will keep the country moving in his direction.

He will be campaigning for them. But he will also be campaigning for himself.

The president understands the bargain. If voters elect Republicans who promise to carry his program forward, they are doing more than choosing a senator or a member of Congress. They are being asked to renew his presidency through other people.

That is why the president’s record belongs in this election.

And so do the receipts.

A campaign rally is designed to make people feel good. It is built around applause lines: the border is secure; taxes are lower; energy is abundant; America is strong; Iran has been stopped.

A receipt is different. It is not what a politician wants to talk about. It is the full account of what was purchased, what it cost, and who paid.

The president will say he fixed immigration. The Republicans he is campaigning for will cheer. They should also be asked about the people caught in the machinery they funded, defended, and in too many cases allowed to operate without restraint.

The administration can claim a sharp drop in releases at the southern border. Customs and Border Protection says it has recorded 14 consecutive months in which no migrants encountered at the border were released into the country. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

That is a fact. But it is only one line of the receipt.

Congress chose to put enormous new enforcement resources behind the administration’s program. The Republican-backed Secure America Act became law in June and provides $70 billion through fiscal year 2029 for the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and related immigration enforcement. (Congress.gov)

When a president gets that much money, he gets the ability to make sweeping choices. He can choose whom to target, whom to detain, whom to deport, and how much room due process will have in the system.

The administration has used that power far beyond people convicted of violent crimes. CBS News reported from federal data that, in July, ICE arrested more than 800 people a day who had no criminal record. People without criminal convictions made up more than half of ICE arrests that month. Many are accused of civil immigration violations, not criminal offenses. (CBS News)

That distinction is not legal trivia. It is the difference between a violent offender and someone whose status paperwork has lapsed, whose visa expired, whose protection was revoked, or whose immigration case has not been resolved.

The Trump administration has also stripped Temporary Protected Status from large groups of people who had been allowed to live and work in the United States legally under protections granted by the federal government. When that protection disappears, people who were here lawfully can become subject to removal. (The Guardian)

And this enforcement effort has reached people connected to nations and communities that helped the United States during war. In August, reporting documented the deportation to the Central African Republic of an Afghan man whose brothers had worked with the U.S. military. His lawyer and advocates said he had been granted protection in the United States. (Los Angeles Times)

People in Fredericksburg understand the moral weight of a promise made in wartime. This is a military community. We have veterans, military families, federal workers, contractors, and neighbors who served alongside people from Afghanistan and other allied nations. The United States asked local people overseas to help Americans. We should not treat our obligation to them as disposable when politics change.

A Republican candidate who campaigns with the president cannot simply say, “The border is secure.” He or she should explain whether a civil immigration violation is now to be treated as though it were a criminal conviction. He or she should explain whether a person who was legally present yesterday can be deportable tomorrow because the government rescinded the protection it granted. And he or she should explain why Congress supplied billions for detention and removal but has failed, again, to fix an immigration system that has been broken for decades.

Then the president will talk about taxes.

He will say Republicans lowered them. Some taxpayers will agree. They may have more money in their paychecks, and small-business owners may welcome lower rates and more predictable tax rules.

But the receipt has more than one line.

The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion federal deficit in 2026 and projects debt held by the public to rise to $3.1 trillion by 2036, above the highest level recorded after World War II. (Congressional Budget Office)

No party has a monopoly on fiscal discipline. Both parties have spent money they did not have. Both have avoided hard choices.

But Republicans in Congress cannot run from this particular receipt. They passed the tax and spending law. The Office of Management and Budget estimated that legislation enacted in 2025 added $4.4 trillion to deficits through 2035, largely because of the reconciliation law’s tax cuts and other provisions. (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget)

Put it plainly: they passed the bill; the country gets the bill.

Then add tariffs. Republicans call them a tool to protect American industry, push back against unfair trade, and encourage companies to build here. Those goals may be worthy. But tariffs are not paid by a foreign country in the way campaign speeches often suggest. They travel through the supply chain and land in prices paid by American businesses and consumers.

The Budget Lab at Yale estimated that the tariff policies then in place would raise prices by 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent and cost the average household roughly $760 to $940 if certain tariffs expired as scheduled. If they continued, the estimated household cost rose to roughly $1,200 to $1,500. (The Budget Lab at Yale)

That is not an economic theory for a family in the Fredericksburg area. It is a higher bill for a refrigerator, a car repair, school supplies, appliances, tools, clothes, and the goods trucked up Interstate 95 to local stores and restaurants.

The president may call that economic strength. Republican candidates may applaud. But if they want credit for tax relief, they also own the debt and the price increases that follow from their choices.

Next comes energy.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. marketed natural-gas production will average a record 122.5 billion cubic feet per day in 2026, exceeding the prior record of 118.5 billion cubic feet per day set in 2025. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)

But energy production is not the same thing as energy affordability.

People here do not measure energy policy by the number of barrels, leases, or press releases issued in Washington. They measure it by what they pay to fill a tank, heat a home, keep the lights on, run a business, and move goods through a growing region.

The Iran war drove up fuel prices. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that, on March 30, the national average retail diesel price reached $5.40 a gallon—the highest level in real terms in more than two years—after the February 28 military action in the Middle East and the resulting disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)

For this region, diesel is not a specialty fuel. It powers the trucks moving along I-95, delivers food and medicine to stores, runs construction equipment, supports local service businesses, and adds cost to almost everything a family buys. When diesel reaches $5.40 a gallon, that price does not stay at the pump. A restaurant pays more. A store pays more. Then every customer pays more.

This is where the president’s energy claim meets his Iran claim. You cannot boast about “energy dominance” while waging a war that drives up the fuel price paid by the people you are asking to vote for your party.

Finally, he will say he stopped Iran.

Iran is dangerous. It has supported armed groups that threaten American interests and Israel. It has pursued nuclear capabilities that threaten the region and the world. Nobody should be casual about that danger.

The American and Israeli strikes did real damage. The Arms Control Association concluded that the attacks severely damaged Iran’s operating enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, likely leaving them unable to enrich uranium at that time. (Arms Control Association)

But the receipt does not say, “Iran stopped.” It says, “War.”

The United States and Israel began attacks on Iran on February 28. Six months later, ABC News described the conflict as a deeply unpopular stalemate. By that point, 18 U.S. service members had been killed and more than 750 had been wounded. (ABC News)

That is not a footnote in Fredericksburg. This is a community that knows the cost of war. It is measured in deployments, phone calls home, spouses carrying the burden alone, veterans who remember the last war, and families who know that “national security” can arrive at their front door.

And Congress has its own receipt.

The Constitution gives Congress—not the president alone—the power to declare war. Yet Congress did not approve a declaration of war or a specific authorization for the use of military force against Iran before the president acted. A proposed 2026 authorization itself states that Congress had not declared war or enacted a specific authorization for hostilities against Iran. (Congress.gov)

Republicans in Congress had choices. They could have demanded a vote. They could have insisted on defined objectives, a time limit, reporting requirements, limits on ground troops, and a clear strategy for ending the war. Instead, Congress stood aside while the president widened executive war powers.

That silence is not neutrality. It is a decision.

So when President Trump stands beside Republican candidates this fall, listen carefully. He will tell us what he believes he achieved. They will tell us they are the people who will continue it.

Then ask them what they will do with the receipts.

Will they defend the removal of people whose only offense is a civil immigration violation? Will they honor the commitments America made to those who helped us in war? Will they explain why tax cuts come paired with trillions more in debt and tariffs that raise costs for local families? Will they explain why a promise of lower energy costs has been followed by diesel above $5 a gallon? Will they explain why Congress stayed silent while another war expanded without its authorization?

They are not running alongside the president’s record.

Congress helped make it.

And if they want to continue it, voters are entitled to ask for the receipt.

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Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel, federal civil servant and consultant who writes on civic education. He lives in Fredericksburg.