In part because of the US Government -- and specifically the US Visa Waiver Program as stick and carrot -- the Swedish and other VWP countries' governments did things the US wanted, including changing passport issuance policies and practices. Previously, Swedish consulates across the US were able to issue standard passports locally, but now they are basically crippled from doing that and are fast becoming even more pointless outposts in terms of providing Swedish citizen services. The emergency passport replacement travel doc is indeed sometimes not very popular at all, and the airline reps, TSA employees and/or CBP have sometimes made stinks over these docs, sometimes more so if everyone else in the same travel party has a regular passport issued by the same country as the person using say a government-issued travel letter or a shortened-validity, limited purpose passport where a blank book is used in conjunction with a visa sticker-like vignette with the biodata fields of the sort that are historically standard for ICAO-compliant passports.

The fees to get a Swedish passport are lower in Sweden than to apply for the Swedish passport in the US. Haven't the costs to get a Swedish passport in Sweden risen too, just not as much as they have skyrocketed for Swedish citizens applying from outside of Sweden?