President Paletuatoa Peniamina issued a cost-of-living message hours before Election Day, presenting his administration’s economic record as a central argument for a second term.

In the release, Peniamina said working families continue to face pressure from higher rents, grocery costs and stagnant paychecks. He cited actions his administration says it has taken, including raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour, indexing it to inflation, placing limits on rent increases and capping insulin costs at $35 per month.

“You feel it every week. The squeeze,” Peniamina said. “Your rent goes up. Your grocery bill climbs. Your paycheck stays the same.”

The president also pointed to policies allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription-drug prices and to what the release described as efforts to close tax loopholes used by billionaires and corporations. The release characterized rent caps as protections against price gouging and unchecked rent increases.

Peniamina framed the election as a choice between continuing those policies and an opposing agenda he said would roll back economic protections. He accused “the other side” of seeking cuts to Medicare and Social Security and of favoring tax breaks for wealthy Americans.

“They want to cut Medicare. They want to gut Social Security. They want to give tax breaks to billionaires while working families struggle,” Peniamina said, without identifying specific proposals or candidates.

The statement arrives in a tense and polarized national campaign environment, where cost of living remains among the most prominent voter concerns. Peniamina, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor president in his first term, has also recently emphasized voting rights and executive action in late-campaign messaging.

His latest release focused on a practical economic appeal rather than a detailed new policy proposal. It did not provide implementation dates, fiscal estimates or additional details about the rent, wage, drug-pricing and tax measures cited.

“I will never stop fighting to lower costs for working families,” Peniamina said. “Not because it’s politically popular — because it’s the right thing to do.”