dana: dramatic moment as homeland security secretary mayokas is forced to face the family of a grandmother and 7-year-old girl killed in a texas car crashed with an alleged human struggler. he turned to face the family expressed condolences but refusing to offer an apology for his failure to secure the border. very emotional day on the hill yesterday. welcome to a new hour on america s newsroom. i m dana perino. bill: i m bill hemmer. good morning. a heated hearing as republicans hold secretary mayokas accountable for the historic crisis on the border calling his leadership an abject failure. this grieving family of that little girl and grandmother later meeting in private urging him to send thousands of troops to secure the border saying he needs to do that first before any attempt at immigration reform. dana: lawmakers calling out the secretary for being complicit in fentanyl deaths of 100,000 americans. these are some of their faces. bill: bill melugin has spent
let s talk to steve more about this. steve, the problem is inflation is at decades high. recession around the corner. it s a heck of a one-two punch. you better believe it. the good news is that the inflation rate has come down a little bit the last two or three months, charles. that s good news. we went from almost 9% inflation this past summer to now we re down to about 7.1%. as you just said, that is still the highest inflation rate we ve had in 35, 40 years. so americans are feeling the punch. their wages and salaries have only gone up by 5 or 6%. that s one of the reasons that you reported that credit card debt is going up. people are trying to maintain their standard of living but paychecks are not keeping pace. i m nervous. i think inflation will come down in 2023 from the high rates of 2022. but i also think that the economy shows real signs of slowing down. i pray we don t crash into a recession. but we sure could. charles: steve, that s what i m concerned about.
not only i m having problems with how they try to liberalize how we do the e.v. credits. we should begin manufacturing back and making sure we are doing it in america. dana: he speaks in a reasonable tone but what did he think was going to happen when he signed on to help pass that bill? that s exactly right, dana. senator manchin does a great job of saying one thing in west virginia but different than he votes in d.c. this ad says it all. it is about joe manchin s key role in passing the so-called inflation reduction act that had nothing to do with inflation reduction. it was a gigantic climate change bill that was designed for liberals and by liberals. joe manchin was credited as the architect and even came up with the name of it. the one he was critical passing is a dagger to the coal economy.
charles, it was an ugly sweater months of coal economy and stock market in 2022. you almost never see this kind of volatility where you see stocks and bonds down double digits at the same time. almost never happens. it was a remindner 2022 that the old wall street adage, you don t fight the fed. even though we can t fight the fed, we have to take advantage of the policy mistakes that the fed has made. we can express gratitude for those and look for opportunities in 2023. we re grateful investing here in the u.s. and not in russia, china, europe and japan. retirees are seeing some savings. we re grateful the consumer has been as resilient as they have been considering everything that has been thrown at them. double digit grocery bills and utility bills.
the idea i can t go home to west virginia and sell this. you highlight how far behind west virginia is compared to other states. for example, life expectancy, six years behind new york. is he working against interests of his own constituents? of course. west virginia, look, it is not fault of people in west virginia. the economy shifted from resource economy, coal economy to knowledge economy, and a lot of knowledge based industries moved to places with big metropolitan areas with highly educated people. that s hard to reverse. the way to help a place like west virginia which has been stranded by these things is to give them money, give people resources to make sure they have adequate health care, make sure they can raise their children. west virginia depends a lot, again, what we re supposed to do, if people are in trouble, we re supposed to help them. west virginia is a big recipient