Liberal policymakers couldn’t help themselves: Ways and Means Committee Democrats, in a now-deleted post on X, cynically responded to the record-holiday shopping news report with, “And here we were thinking y’all couldn’t afford eggs!” Once again, they expose how out of touch they are with Americans’ hardship.

This holiday shopping season is off to a strong start, but that should not be confused with bountiful household balance sheets. Indeed, many consumers aren’t letting high prices hold them back from celebrating this year’s holiday season. Spending hit records on Thanksgiving Day ($6.1 billion), Black Friday ($10.8 billion), and Cyber Monday ($13.3 billion), according to data from Adobe Analytics. Perhaps because prices are high. The National Retail Federation projects that consumers will shell out $25 per person more on average this year compared to last year on gifts, food, and decorations.

One weekend or one month of consumerism won’t erase how financially stretched households feel. Even more, not everyone is spending. Many working-class and low-income Americans will alter and even skip holiday gift-giving due to high prices. A U.S. News & World Report survey found nearly 70% of Americans are worried about paying for gifts this year, with roughly 20% being “very” worried.

Holiday spending survey data from the Conference Board show that while households earning above $75,000 plan to spend more, consumers earning less than $75K will cut back on gifts and non-gift items this year.

Lost purchasing power from years of high prices has left the majority of households feeling squeezed. Two-thirds of Americans (65%) feel they are living paycheck to paycheck, up from just over half (52.5%) last year. Unaffordability is not just a poor-person problem; one out of five affluent households is living paycheck to paycheck as well. A $100 unexpected expense could financially sink 18% of all adults because that’s the most they have in savings.

While the inflation rate (or the consumer price index) isn’t as high as 2022, prices remain 20% higher than when President Biden took office.

As shoppers swipe plastic to pay for presents, they will incur sharply higher balances. Despite recent interest cuts by the Federal Reserve, the average retail credit card interest rates have risen sharply from 24% in 2021 to over 30% in 2024.

Voters were fed up with the sting of this economy when they gave conservatives a clean sweep. President-elect Donald Trump won working-class and middle-class households because he saw them and made boosting their incomes the cornerstone of his platform. Leftist elites spent the better part of nearly four years refusing to acknowledge high prices were a problem, then shifted to talking down to the uneducated masses about how great the economy was.

After weeks of post-mortems, the message from the invisible class of voters should be loud and clear. So when Democrats on the tax-writing congressional committee put out a tone-deaf tweet like this, they demonstrate obstinance, not ignorance.

There is a chance for redemption. Lawmakers on the left side of the aisle must join with conservatives to get serious about helping struggling Americans. They can start by extending expiring provisions of President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Corporate and individual tax cuts delivered tremendous benefits for workers, families, and businesses. Corporate investment rose, as did gross domestic product. U.S. companies added 4.7 million new jobs, and real median household incomes grew by more than $5,000. Real wages rose by 4.9% in the two years after the law was signed—the fastest growth in 20 years—while income taxes fell for people at virtually every income level. The TCJA also triggered a bonanza of worker bonuses and new benefits.

If the tax cuts are allowed to expire, Americans will be stiffed with a massive tax increase just after the holidays next year.

The Left can gain some goodwill from hardworking Americans for passing tax relief, even if it means delivering Trump an early win. Or they can continue to condescend and turn a blind eye to the real hardship holding back too many American households.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) checks the background of illegal aliens they have in custody. But, the administration’s letter to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) shows that as of July 21, 2024, ICE let 435,719 convicted criminals and 226,847 people with pending criminal charges in their home countries into the U.S.

Of those cleared by ICE, 13,099 have convictions for homicide, and another 1,845 were facing criminal charges. Some 9,461 have convictions for sex offenses (not including assault or commercialized sex), and 2,659 face pending charges. The convictions include other crimes such as assault (62,231), robbery (10,031), sexual assault (15,811), weapons offenses (13,423), and dangerous drugs (56,533).

About 7.4 million noncitizens are in the “national docket data,” so 662,776 is 9% of the total, and if one extrapolates the numbers to the homicide rate in this country, it strongly indicates that the government is letting migrants into this country who commit murder at a rate 50% higher than the rest of the U.S. population.

And these numbers clearly underestimate the crime rate of these noncitizens. The noncitizens in the “national docket data” turned themselves in to border agents for processing or were caught. Those who don’t turn themselves in are obviously far more likely to have something to hide from those doing the processing, so-called “gotaways,” who are observed illegally entering the U.S. but not caught or turned back.

These figures coincide with other data from the Arizona prison system and show illegal aliens commit crime at much higher rates than Americans or legal immigrants.

Under the Remain-in-Mexico policy, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) did background checks on immigrants’ cases, including contacting the country that the immigrant is from before they are approved to come to the U.S.

ICE agents cannot access the same databases to check on the immigrants, and they didn’t contact the immigrant’s home country. Plus, the massive inflow of immigrants has overwhelmed the system. The Deputy Director for ICE blames the “enormous workload”  agents face, so they haven’t been able to do even the limited background checks they are doing. There are so many coming in that the government can’t house these immigrants until their backgrounds are properly checked.

ICE processed these criminals as they entered the country, but it didn’t identify them as criminals, so it released them into the country. Now, they are just walking around freely in the United States, and no one knows where they are.

It took over six months for the Biden administration to finally respond to a congressional request for these numbers. The deputy director for ICE “apologized” for the delay.

As bad as these numbers are, the reality may be even worse. The Biden-Harris administration is cooking the books to make the border crisis not look as bad as it is. For example, in mid-September, retired San Diego Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke testified how the Biden-Harris administration ordered him not to publicize the arrests of illegal border crossers identified as having ties to terrorism.

Democrats quickly pointed out that some of these criminals came in before the Biden administration. But the administration’s letter to Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, didn’t provide a breakdown of how many came through under Biden-Harris. The administration policy, with its limited background checks and overwhelmed agents, has a much higher error rate compared to Trump’s Remain-in-Mexico approach. Background checks are ineffective if officials don’t even contact the immigrant’s home country.

Even if illegal immigrants weren’t committing crimes at higher rates than the general population, the American people have a right to expect those entering this country to be screened in order to prevent more murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and thieves from entering the country. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have the authority to call for expedited extradition for criminal illegal aliens in the U.S., but they have only moved to make extradition more difficult.