Mainstream Media Fact Checkers Had No Choice but to Call Out Biden's Multiple 'Misleading' SOTU Claims
President Joe Biden strayed from the facts more than once during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, according to multiple fact-checking websites.
The Washington Post took issue with 13 claims made by the president.
For example, Biden claimed, “In the last two years, my administration cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history.”
“Biden misleadingly claims to have lowered the deficit by a huge amount even though his policies have added significantly to the national debt. How is this possible? Welcome to federal budget magic,” the Post reported.
The Post later noted that federal deficits were due to decline once emergency pandemic aid stopped flowing and were expected to hit $3.31 trillion for the 2021 and 2022 federal fiscal years. Instead, the deficits totaled $4.15 trillion, meaning Biden added to the debt by roughly $850 billion.
“One hundred percent of the deficit reduction, on net, was the result of waning COVID relief,” Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told FactCheck.org.
“All said, the decline in the deficit over the past fiscal year is more than entirely the result of waning COVID relief and not of historic deficit reduction by President Biden as the White House claims. In fact, the president’s actions to date have increased deficits by $4.8 trillion through 2031,” the group wrote.
The Puppet in Chief misleads the nation again.
Job Creation?
Deficit reduction?
The GOP stance on Social Security and Medicare?
“Speech went over like a lead spy balloon”.
Republicans tear into Biden’s ‘lies’ as he repeats misleading claims https://t.co/tz991Z0JJL via @MailOnline— REINHARDT 🇺🇸 (@kurtreinhardt77) February 8, 2023
Among the 13 factual deficiencies noted by the Post was his claim that “Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s a majority. … Anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I’ll give you a copy.”
The Post noted that “[n]ot even the person who wrote the plan that Biden referenced says he supports a ‘sunset’ of the old-age programs.”
The Post also included a comment from Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who has backed the concept that every dose of spending must be reviewed and renewed in five years to control federal spending.
“No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security, but what we’re doing is we don’t even talk about it. Medicare goes bankrupt in four years. Social Security goes bankrupt in 12 years,” Scott said. “I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs. Every program that we care about, we ought to stop and take the time to preserve those programs.”
Over at FactCheck.org, Biden’s job growth claims drew a frown.
The site noted that job growth “was fueled by a post-pandemic recovery that started under his predecessor.”
As for Biden’s claim that Americans are earning more, the site noted that wages have risen “but the rise is not as fast as inflation. ‘Real’ weekly earnings, which are adjusted for inflation, have gone down.”
As the Post noted in its review: “Biden is comparing his jobs record for the first two years of his term to the full four-year terms of the previous presidents. That’s misleading.”
Politifact noted Biden claimed success for an immigration policy that has barely begun when he said, “We’ve launched a new border plan last month. Unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97 percent as a consequence of that.”
The site noted that the claim is based on only a one-month drop from December 2022 to January 2023.
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