President Joe Biden has made some fanciful to downright deceitful claims since taking office, from saying there was no COVID-19 vaccine available to calling Georgia’s voter integrity legislation “Jim Crow 2.0.”
But his recent talking points about his administration’s responsible handling of inflation and government spending take the cake.
On Friday, Biden recounted that his administration helped tackle inflation by lowering the deficit. Inflation is currently at a near 40-year high of 8.3 percent.
“My friends on the Republican side like to paint me as the ‘big spender.’ But let’s look at the facts. Facts matter,” he said.
“Under my predecessor, the deficit exploded, rising every single year he was in office. Under my plan, we’re on track to cut the federal deficit this year by $1.7 trillion. You hear me now? This year by $1.7 trillion. That’s a fact. The largest decline in American history,” Biden continued.
What a ridiculous thing to brag about, when during his first year in office, Biden and the Democrats needlessly shot the deficit way up.
In March 2021, the 46th president signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law.
President Biden: “Facts matter. Under my predecessor, the deficit exploded, rising every single year he was in office. Under my plan, we’re on track to cut the federal deficit this year by $1.7 trillion. That’s a fact. The largest decline in American history.” pic.twitter.com/xb2233Sgav
— The Hill (@thehill) June 5, 2022
Prominent economists, including former Clinton Secretary of Treasury Larry Summers, Obama Treasury official Steven Rattner, and others, warned it would be inflationary.
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After the American Rescue Plan passed, Summers called it,“the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.”
The legislation contributed greatly to a nearly $2.8 trillion federal deficit in 2021.
Why was it inflationary? Because it was financed through the Federal Reserve printing money, and it paid people not to work.
So in order for employers to try to fill the positions, they had to raise wages.
Those costs were then passed on to consumers.
Even as inflation began spiking last fall — hitting 7 percent by December from 2.6 percent prior to the American Rescue Plan — Biden pushed hard to get Build Back Better through Congress.
That proposal would have taken some of the worst aspects of the American Rescue Plan and essentially made them permanent.
The House-passed version of Build Back Better came in at approximately $2.1 trillion over 10 years, but assuming the entitlements were made permanent, which is what Democrats really wanted, the cost would more than double to $4.9 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Thankfully, Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia were not onboard with Build Back Better, so it never cleared the upper chamber of Congress.
After doing everything he could to help push the legislation through, Biden is now coming along saying he’s some sort of deficit hawk.
That does not pass the straight face test.
Further, the Congressional Budget Office projects the deficit will come in at $1 trillion, which would be higher than the $984 billion total in 2019, the last year before the pandemic while former President Donald Trump was in office.
When Biden became president in January 2021, the economy was well on its way to recovery. The unemployment rate had dropped from a pandemic high of 14.7 percent in April 2020 to 6.3 percent.
By the way, it stood at 3.6 percent in May, higher than Trump’s 3.5 percent at the end of 2019.
One more thing worth noting from Biden’s Friday remarks regarding the deficit is that he conceded the Trump tax cuts are working as advertised in terms of generating revenue to the treasury.
“Historic economic growth that not only helped tens of millions of families move up, it has helped our federal deficit come down,” Biden said.
Despite this fact, the 46th president pushed to end the Trump tax cuts through Build Back Better and still wants to now.
The numbers speak for themselves: The Treasury took in a record of over $4 trillion in revenues in fiscal year 2021 and is on track to receive over $4.8 trillion this year.
By way of comparison, the federal government took in $3.3 trillion in revenues in 2017 prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act being implemented. Oh, and corporate income tax revenues hit an all-time high in 2021 of $370 billion, too. In 2017, the amount was $297 billion.
In other words, supply-side economics works: The economy grows, more people are hired, they buys goods and pay taxes and the revenue to the federal treasury ultimately increases.
Saying Biden is truth-challenged is an established fact.
To claim he’s some sort of deficit fighting champion is just the latest example of the president and his handlers trying to deceive the American public.
