The Truer Better Agenda: Making Life More Affordable for Iowa Families

Traveling the state as part of my 100 Town Hall Tour, I hear it constantly: the cost of living is just too high.

Iowa is consistently ranked at the bottom in the country for economic growth, and has averaged 48th for personal income growth over the last three years. Iowa’s hourly wage is the worst and least competitive in the region – the average Nebraskan earns nearly $2,000 more per year than the average Iowan, and the average Wisconsinite more than $3,000.

That means that while costs have skyrocketed across the country on everything from groceries to housing costs to utility bills, Iowans are the ones being hit the hardest, with less money in their pockets to cover those higher costs.

While Iowans continue to struggle to get by, government insiders are spending their time passing one culture war bill after another to further divide us, hoping we’ll be too distracted to notice they’ve been picking our pockets. I want to change that, and get to work making life more affordable and strengthen our economy on day one.

As governor, I’ll bring both parties together to lower costs by:

Lowering Health Care Costs:

End the privatization of Medicaid: Privatizing Medicaid has been one of the most disastrous decisions in Iowa over the last decade. It prioritized profits over the health of our communities; reduced access to care for tens of thousands of Iowans; and has been an administrative nightmare for patients and providers. As governor, I’ll get started ending the privatization of Medicaid on day one of my administration.
Lower the cost of prescription drugs: Establish a Prescription Drugs Review Board to help Iowa negotiate lower prescription drug costs for life-saving medicine like insulin, and hold drug companies accountable to lower costs by cracking down on price gouging and following the recommendations of our PBM audit. We should explore the feasibility of importing generic prescription drugs from Canada to lower costs for Iowans.
Support Family Caregivers: Family caregivers spend up to $7,500 of their own money every year to provide care for family members. Tens of thousands of Iowans provide full- or part-time care for a relative or loved one with no help or access to resources. Offering a nonrefundable tax credit of up to $2,000 annually for caregivers, with an additional $1,000 for caretakers of veterans, would help put money back in the pockets of family caregivers who do selfless work for our communities. These resources would be targeted based on income and need – approximately 57,000 Iowans would be eligible.
Expand Iowa’s “Surprise Bill” Law: No Iowan should go bankrupt due to surprise medical bills. I support expanding Iowa’s “Surprise Bill” law to cover all medical appointments and procedures from unexpected medical bills.
Protecting Iowans from medical debt: Iowa has the fastest-growing rate of medical debt in the country, and is home to the number one growth rate for cancer. Those two things added up equal mountains of debt and medical bills for Iowans. Medical debt is one of the cheapest debts. As governor, I would work with private-public partnerships, including with organizations such as Undue Medical Debt, to protect tens of thousands of Iowans from medical debt without costing taxpayers a penny. I would also support policies to remove medical debt from hurting Iowans’ credit scores to ensure this debt doesn’t hurt their ability to rent apartments or buy a car, or increase their insurance premiums.

Lowering Energy Costs:

Cap fees: As governor, I’d work to cap “service” or “meter” fees, which are not based on usage but which Iowans are forced to pay simply for enrolling in the service.
Put customers first: The current utility model puts utility companies – not customers – first. We need to make the ratemaking process more transparent to prevent utility companies from taking advantage of customers, and mandate that regulators approve Return on Equity (ROE) levels to prevent excess profits at ratepayer expense. I talk about other ways to hold utility companies and major corporations accountable in my data centers plan, including calling on them to pay their own way, cover any cost increases, monitor their water usage, and more.
Expand grid capacity and efficiency: We need to utilize customer-based power plants, distributed energy resources, and grid-enhancing technologies to save costs and prevent load issues. In addition, I’d work to repeal Iowa’s misguided limit on utility investments in efficiency. Can you believe they limited efficiency!?
Promote affordable renewables: We need to maintain and grow incentives for clean energy that directly saves consumers money and improves our health. This ensures Iowans’ ability to sell excess solar and offset utility costs with low-cost renewables. Utah’s plug-in solar model is a good one to base this off of to help lower energy costs.

Lowering Education Costs:

Universal school meals: Kids can’t learn on an empty stomach. Supporting policies like universal school meals would not only ensure our kids have the fuel they need to pay attention and be productive in the classroom, but would save every Iowa parent time and money each week. The federal government cut $1 billion in funding for local food programs in 2025, leaving districts across our state and the country scrambling. Some districts across Iowa offer universal school meals, but it should be available for every Iowa public school student. As governor, I’d advocate to model the former federal program at the state level, which I talk about in my “Opportunities for All” agenda, to cut costs for parents and make sure our kids are being fed without increasing costs on Iowans.
Universal all day Pre-K: Investing early in our kids is the best way we can set them up for success, but over the last decade of one-party control, those investments haven’t been made. Look at the data: Iowa ranks 40th for state spending for pre-school, and over half of Iowa kids ages 3-4 don’t attend pre-school. Every Iowa child should have access to high-quality Pre-K no matter where they live. Importantly, the return on investment is 17 to 1 because investing early in our kids’ education reduces the likelihood that they will commit crimes and reduces reliance on public assistance when those kids become adults.
Demand accountability for private school vouchers: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: private school voucher program has been one of the biggest invitations to waste, fraud, and abuse in Iowa history, taking taxpayer dollars meant for public schools and handing them out to private schools and the wealthiest families in Iowa with zero accountability. We need to reform this policy to ensure tax dollars are being spent appropriately. I outlined that in my “Accountability for All” plan. If we reformed vouchers, we’d have money to pay for programs like universal school meals and universal Pre-K – with millions of dollars leftover. It’s about helping all Iowa kids, not just the wealthy.

Lowering Housing Costs:

Build more homes and eliminate red tape that stands in the way of that: Iowa needs to build 21,000 more homes by 2030 to address our housing shortage and ensure affordability across the board. As governor, I’ll work with the legislature to make it easier to build more homes and different types of homes, like duplexes, quadplexes, and ADUs. We need to cut the bureaucratic red tape that often stands in the way of that by simplifying the permitting and inspections process to reduce administrative time, redundant inspections, and costs for Iowa families.
Protect Iowans against price gouging: We need to protect renters from unfair price gouging by banning landlords from using AI algorithms to price fix and raise rents.
Make downpayment assistance for first-time homebuyers interest-free: Right now, Iowa offers downpayment assistance through a second mortgage – with interest. For too many young Iowans, homeownership has become out of reach. If we want to keep Iowans in Iowa, we need to make homeownership a reality. We can do that by helping Iowa first-time homebuyers with interest-free downpayment and homebuyer assistance.