Here’s a headline that, if you’ve been making car insurance payments over the last few years, might seem pretty hard to believe. It turns out that average auto insurance premiums actually declined in March, month-over-month. Yes, for many people, premiums have gotten cheaper, even as car prices have remained high. Inflation has seemingly been defeated, at least in this particular industry. The declines were particularly steep in Florida, where insurers like Geico, Progressive and State Farm are cutting rates by as much as 10%. But there’s no question that this is a nationwide phenomenon. Insurance rates are down by roughly 1% across the board — which might not sound like a lot, but it’s a big difference from the typical double-digit increases that we’ve been seeing lately. When you go from 15-point average increases to a 1% decrease, you’re saving a lot of money, relatively speaking. So why is this happening, exactly? Ask ten different people and you’ll probably get ten different answers. And all of them might be right, at least partially. But here’s one theory. It could be that insurance rates are going down because our roads are getting safer. And maybe our roads are getting safer because two grand Left-wing experiments — the BLM “de-policing” movement and the open borders agenda — have both finally come to an end. Each of these movements clearly made driving significantly more dangerous, in their own way. Beginning in 2020, of course, BLM convinced police departments to stop enforcing laws — including traffic laws. And the effect was immediate. By one estimate, 35% more black people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2021, as compared with 2019. In other words, a lot of black motorists suddenly realized that they could drive however they wanted. They’d no longer be pulled over for supposedly “driving while black,” which was something they imagined was happening all the time. And they took full advantage of the situation. Insurance companies had to deal with the carnage that followed. Along the same lines, as we’ve discussed before, the flood of illegal aliens into this country under the Biden administration has led to a lot of drunk-driving collisions, which have wiped out entire families in some cases. Many of these illegal aliens don’t have driver’s licenses, and they refuse to obey the rules of the road. In the tiny town of Springfield, for example, one resident recently estimated that she sees 8 to 10 traffic accidents per day. Haitian migrants, which now make up around one-third of the population, routinely drive into buildings and onto sidewalks. They’ve mowed down children and elderly women, with total impunity. One of these Haitian migrants ran over Kathy Heaton, a 71-year-old grandmother, while she was collecting her garbage cans. She died in the street, after an impact that was so severe that her socks were literally removed from her feet. The driver wasn’t even prosecuted. This era of impunity is now over. Police departments are no longer being overrun with BLM mobs. Border security is being enforced again. The result is that the prices that American citizens have to pay — both in terms of dollar amounts, and lives that are lost — are coming down. It turns out that, when you have a society that enforces laws, everyone benefits. The White House seems to understand this. That’s why, every other day, we’re hearing about a new plan to reduce the cost of these kinds of externalities for Americans. Here’s the latest example. The New York Times is now reporting that the Trump administration is canceling the Social Security numbers of foreign nationals who, for one reason or another, were allowed into this country during Joe Biden’s presidency: The Trump administration has moved aggressively to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the country under President Biden. … Now, the administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained. … The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits. According to the Times, thousands of “convicted criminals and suspected terrorists” are among the foreign nationals who just had their Social Security numbers revoked. Yes, apparently the Biden administration provided “convicted criminals and suspected terrorists” with Social Security numbers, so that they could obtain government benefits. The Biden administration determined that this course of action was preferable to just deporting these people, or throwing them in prison. Now the Trump administration is changing that policy. Again, this will have the effect of reducing payments by taxpayers to people who shouldn’t even be here. It will also make our roads and our communities a lot safer, in all likelihood. More than anything else, this is what Americans voted for in the last election. If Republicans are going to remain in power in Washington, and avoid a Democrat takeover of Congress in the midterms next year, then this kind of thing has to continue. And more importantly, Congress has to start supporting it. That’s how we can ensure that the cost of living will continue dropping. A large part of that equation is reducing government spending, which Congress controls. As we all know, when the government spends trillions of dollars every year, that money is either coming from taxpayers, or it’s being printed and borrowed (which reduces the value of the money we’re all holding). Either way, we’re losing a lot of money in the process. At the moment, it appears that a small contingent of Republican lawmakers in Congress recognizes that this arrangement needs to change, at least to some degree. They just held out for assurances that the next spending bill will slash one-point-five trillion dollars from the budget. And after a lot of hand-wringing, they apparently received those assurances. Watch: So there were two plans here, for a spending bill to fund the government. The Senate plan, which passed over the weekend, would only reduce the deficit by around four billion dollars. That’s basically nothing compared to the new House framework, which demands a minimum of one-point-five trillion dollars in deficit reduction. But here’s the problem: Even this new framework isn’t binding. It just sets a broad outline for future negotiations between the House and Senate, which still need to finalize a budget. And several members of Congress — most notably Thomas Massie of Kentucky — believe that this deal is worth about as much as the paper it’s printed on. Thomas Massie has been in office for more than a decade, and he understands how Congress works. He knows that it’s one thing for lawmakers to promise spending cuts. But it’s a completely different matter for them to agree on a bill that actually cuts spending. Here’s what Massie told a reporter after the framework was announced: What’s surprising here isn’t anything Thomas Massie is saying. What’s surprising is that so few Republicans in Congress are agreeing with him. The reason voters elected Republicans to control both chambers of Congress, along with the White House, is that they want government spending and the cost of living to come down. That’s one of the top issues in every exit poll. And now that Donald Trump is doing that — or attempting to do it — Congress is refusing to codify any of his cuts into law. If a Democrat becomes president, he could override all these DOGE cuts in a day-one executive order. And by the way, no matter what you think of Trump’s tariffs, Massie makes a good point. Why hasn’t Congress held a vote on them? Tariffs are a form of taxation. They have the potential to significantly raise the cost of goods in the United States, among other effects. Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to tax. Even if you approve of the tariffs, you should still want Congress to vote on them, for the simple reason that they’ll be harder to overturn in a future administration. On the other hand, if you’re skeptical of tariffs, a congressional vote would allow for a full debate on the issue. Instead of unilateral announcements from the White House, we’d be able to hear the arguments on each side. But the GOP leadership in Congress hasn’t displayed any interest in holding a vote on tariffs. In fact they’ve blocked a vote on the topic. And they haven’t held votes on the DOGE cuts or any other significant spending cuts. In fact, they still haven’t reined in any of the trillion dollars’ worth of spending in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was full of giveaways to environmentalist groups and NGOs. Why exactly hasn’t any of that waste been rolled back? Why is no one bothered to even talk about it? Really congress has not codified any of Trump’s executive orders at all, which means they’re all susceptible to being overturned with the stroke of a pen by the next administration. Where is congress? When it comes to spending, if you ask Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, he’ll say that Republicans aren’t actually serious about cutting spending. Like Massie, he thinks the spending cuts will never actually happen. Here’s what he said: I think that this town has got a lot of snakes in the grass who don’t want to accomplish it, and anyway that they can they’re going to stop it from happening. And I want to ensure we don’t end up in a place where we let the president down in that regard. Whatever Donald Trump makes of the deal, at the moment, it looks like Republican voters might be let down. We’re talking about raising the debt ceiling by a historic amount, and potentially spending more than the Biden administration ever did. And we’re doing it at a time when we’re initiating a broader trade war, which means that we’ll have less access to money to borrow. This is not a recipe for a stable economic situation going forward. In separate interviews, Thomas Massie and Congressman Jodey Arrington of Texas outlined what’s at stake here. Watch: Even if you listen to that rhetoric and conclude that it’s overblown, or that there’s really no cause for concern, the fundamental point remains: Republicans ran on a platform that involved lowering the cost of living, which includes lowering taxes and government spending. If Republicans cannot deliver on that very simple promise, they will not be in power for very long. And they will be replaced by a party that’s even more committed to more taxes and government spending.  This particular spending bill won’t be finalized for several weeks, in all likelihood. Between now and the moment this legislation is finalized, it’s hard to imagine that anything in Congress is more important than holding GOP leadership to their promise on these spending cuts — and pushing them further, for as many cuts as possible. If Republicans (and their voters) stay focused on that goal, they will have achieved something that the party has promised for decades, but failed to deliver. They will have permanently reduced the size of the American government, for the benefit of everyone living in this country. The White House is clearly committed to this goal. Now it’s time for every Republican in Congress — not just Thomas Massie and a few others — to follow suit.