President Joe Biden claims to be fighting the inflation that is taking a toll on working Americans, but even the “Fact Checker” at the left-leaning Washington Post has called him out for unrealistic promises.
In a commentary piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Biden made a series of bold claims about the economic state of the U.S.
In light of these claims, Post “Fact Checker” columnist Glenn Kessler took a closer look. It turns out that Biden missed the mark for truth.
To begin, Biden claimed that, under his administration, families have less debt and increased savings, and that the job market is the strongest it’s been “since the post-World War II era.”
The inflation of the moment just needs the right policies and his plan to control it, Biden wrote.
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“With the right policies, the U.S. can transition from recovery to stable, steady growth and bring down inflation without giving up all these historic gains,” Biden continued.
But then Biden made what Kessler referred to as a “fantastical” claim.
“A dozen CEOs of America’s largest utility companies told me earlier this year that my plan would reduce the average family’s annual utility bills by $500 and accelerate our transition from energy produced by autocrats,” Biden wrote.
Kessler was skeptical.
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“This line caught our attention,” he wrote. “After all, the typical U.S. family spends $2,060 on average per year for home utility bills, according to the most recent estimate published by EnergyStar.gov. So Biden is promising big savings,” he wrote.
Kessler looked more deeply into Biden’s claim and found out that it was bogus.
First, during the conversation that Biden had with utility executives on Feb. 9, there was no reference to $500 in utility savings, Kessler wrote, linking to a White House transcript of the event.
That $500 figure seems to be connected to Biden’s plans to combat climate change and a report by the research firm the Rhodium Group that predicted Biden’s climate change policies could lower energy costs by 2030.
“First of all, that’s eight years from now — not a lot of help with the current inflation problem, which was the frame of Biden’s op-ed,” Kessler wrote.
Kessler also took issue with how unrealistically Biden calculated American household utility bills and practically ignored the numbers from the Rhodium report. He didn’t even take into account the costs for driving, which was a major part of the figure the Rhodium Group offered.
According to the Rhodium report, Biden’s plans would not be saving astronomical amounts of money.
“Indeed, the report notes that, if the Biden climate plan were adopted, home electricity bills by 2030 would be between one dollar more and five dollars less than under current policy. That might pay for an extra ice cream cone over the summer,” Kessler wrote.
After this evaluation, even the “Fact Checker” at the liberal Post could not turn a blind eye to just how incorrect Biden had been in his facts.
“Is there any doubt the president earns Four Pinocchios?” Kessler wrote.
This is the highest falsehood rating that “Fact Checker” gives.
One Pinocchio would go to “some shading of facts. Selective telling of the truth.” Two Pinocchios are for “significant omissions and/or exaggerations” and three are for “factual error and/or obvious contradictions.” But four Pinocchios are reserved for what the column calls “whoppers.”
