All I want for Christmas is a 2% interest rate.

After the most expensive Thanksgiving ever, the financial pressure on Americans continues. While retailers lure customers with regular Black Friday deals, many Americans don’t have the cash to even pay for what’s on sale. They will be borrowing to do their Christmas shopping, at a time when credit card interest rates are at a record high and delinquencies are rising at the fastest rate in more than a decade.

Bidenomics is the reason why credit card debt is over a trillion dollars today for the first time, even in the midst of sky-high interest rates. In pursuit of the far-left goals of the Biden administration, the government spent, borrowed and printed trillions of dollars, generating 40-year high inflation. As prices rose much faster than wages, people’s purchasing power, or what they can buy with their income, plummeted.

To make ends meet, Americans resorted to buying essentials, such as groceries, with credit cards.

Then, to combat the inflation it helped cause, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates at the fastest pace in decades, compounding the pain for many Americans by raising borrowing costs. Between the loss of purchasing power and higher interest rates, it’s as if the annual income of the typical American family has dropped by $7,300.

With no savings left, Americans are about to go deeper into credit card debt to do their Christmas shopping.

But higher consumer interest rates aren’t even the right way to fight inflation. Instead, the Treasury Department needs to spend, and therefore borrow, less while the Fed sells its US Treasuries much faster. The growth of government spending is what caused the problem, and the reduction of government spending will solve it.

Unfortunately, the Fed has chosen to strangle the private sector for capital while the Treasury continues its breakneck pace of borrowing. The result has been a dramatic increase in interest rates for consumers and businesses, thereby increasing the cost of borrowing for all types of credit: investment loans, credit cards, auto loans, student loans and, especially, mortgages.

The increase in interest rates on a 30-year mortgage from about 2% to nearly 8% has dramatically increased the cost of owning a home. Between higher interest rates and inflated home prices, the monthly mortgage payment for a median-priced home has more than doubled under Biden. Now it costs more than $13,000 more, per year, for the same house.

The dream of owning a home has become a nightmare for countless Americans. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, there are only three major metropolitan areas in the entire country where the median home price is considered affordable.

For those who locked in low mortgage rates before Bidenomics swept the country, they are reaping the benefits of the last administration’s economic policies. For them, a mortgage is a path to building wealth, and the equity in their homes is a valuable reserve of liquidity that can be accessed with a home loan in an emergency. This is not the case for someone trying to get a mortgage today.

Similarly, credit cards can serve as an important lifeline when people are unprepared for a major expense, such as a medical bill or when a large appliance needs to be replaced. Lower credit card interest rates four years ago meant Americans could pay off their debts with much less pain.

But credit card interest rates are at record highs today, making it much easier to fall into a spiral of debt where the monthly finance charges alone exceed what the account holder can pay on the card This causes the outstanding balance to grow, even if no further purchases are made on the credit card.

For many American consumers and businesses alike, the best gift they could receive this year would be lower interest rates. Unfortunately, that’s highly unlikely given the Biden administration’s continued pursuit of its far-left agenda and a Fed that doesn’t understand monetary policy.

Until there are big changes in Washington, the Grinch of higher interest rates will continue to dampen Americans’ holiday spirit. But at least the Grinch had the decency to only rob people around Christmas: those higher interest rates spread the pain year-round.

EJ Antoni is a public finance economist at the Patrimoni Foundation and a senior member of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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