President Joe Biden is back on the campaign trail, traveling in October and early November to pitch his bid to elect Democrats in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Biden’s pitch included claims that are false, misleading or lack significant context. (As always, we’re not taking sides on the accuracy of his subjective arguments.) Here’s a look at nine of his recent statements.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Biden told a Democratic fundraiser in Pennsylvania last week: “In our view, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are going to get the biggest increase in their Social Security checks that they’ve received.” He has also touted increasing Social Security payments in 2023 at other recent events.
But Biden’s boasts leave so little critical context that they are highly misleading. He has not explained that the increase in Social Security payments for 2023, 8.7%, is unusually high simply because inflation has been unusually high. A law passed in the 1970s says that Social Security payments must increase by the same rate that a certain measure of inflation has increased. It’s called a cost-of-living adjustment.
The White House deleted a tweet on Tuesday that provided a particularly triumphant version of the boastful Biden, and spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged on Wednesday that the tweet lacked “context.” You can read a more detailed fact check here.
Biden told a Democratic rally in Florida on Tuesday: “And on my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks.”
The claim that the increase in Social Security payments in 2023 is the first in 10 years is false. In fact, there has been an increase in the cost of living every year since 2017. There was also an increase every year from 2012 to 2015 before the payment level was held steady in 2016 due to a lack of inflation.
The context surrounding that Biden remark in Florida suggests he may have botched his repeated campaign line about Social Security payments rising at the same time Medicare premiums are falling. Regardless of his intentions, however, he was wrong.
Biden repeatedly suggested in speeches in October and early November that a new law he signed in August, the Lower Inflation Act, would end the practice of successful companies paying no federal income tax. Biden made the claim bluntly in a tweet last week: “Let me give you the facts. In 2020, 55 companies made $40 billion. And they paid zero federal taxes. My deflation law puts an end to that.”
But “puts an end to it” is an exaggeration. The Inflation Reduction Act will reduce the number of companies on the defaulters list, but the Act will not eliminate the list entirely.
That’s because the law’s new 15% alternative minimum corporate tax, on the “breakthrough income” that companies report to investors, only applies to companies with average annual revenue of at least $1 billion. (There are many nuances, you can read more details here.) According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the think tank that in 2021 published the list of 55 large and profitable companies that avoided paying any federal income tax in the previous year fiscal year, only 14 of those 55 companies reported US pretax income of at least $1 billion that year.
In other words, there will still be some large and profitable companies that pay no federal income tax even after the minimum tax goes into effect in 2023. The exact number is not yet known.
Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said in an email Thursday that the new tax is “a significant step forward from the status quo” and would raise significant revenue, but he also said: “I would not he wanted to claim that the minimum tax would end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable businesses. A more accurate phrase would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* companies pay at least some federal income tax.”
Biden said at Tuesday’s rally in Florida: “Look, you know, you can hear it from Republicans, ‘Oh my God, this big-spending Democrat Biden. Man, he’s got us in debt.’ Well, guess what? I reduced the federal deficit this year by $1.4 trillion. A trillion 400 billion dollars. The most in all of American history. No one has ever reduced debt this much. We cut the federal debt in half.”
Biden offered a similar narrative at a Thursday rally in New Mexico, this time saying: “We cut the federal debt in half. A fact.”
There are two major problems here.
First: Biden conflated debt and deficit, which are two different things. It’s not true that Biden “cut the federal debt in half.” the federal debt (total borrowing plus interest owed) has continued to rise under Biden, surpassing $31 trillion for the first time this October. Rather, it’s the federal deficit — the annual difference between spending and revenue — that was cut in half between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022.
Second, it’s highly questionable how much credit Biden even deserves for reducing the deficit. Biden fails to mention that the main reason the deficit plummeted in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 was because it had soared to a high level in 2020 due to emergency spending to deal with the pandemic. It then fell as expected as spending ended as planned.
Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics — a financial firm that Biden has repeatedly invoked during his presidency — told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On the net, the administration’s policies have increased the deficit, they didn’t reduce it. ” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, says the administration’s own actions have significantly worsened the deficit picture. (David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds, told Egan that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the economic recovery that boosted tax revenue.)
Biden said at the Florida rally on Tuesday: “Unemployment is down from 6.5 percent to 3.5 percent, the lowest in 50 years.” He said at the New Mexico rally on Thursday: “The unemployment rate is 3.5% – the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”
But Biden failed to acknowledge that September’s 3.5% unemployment rate was actually tied for the lowest in 50 years — a tie, specifically, with three months of Trump in office in late 2019 and early 2020. Given that biden uses these campaign speeches favorably Compare his own record to Trump’s, this omission is significant.
The unemployment rate rose to 3.7% in October. That number was revealed on Friday, following those Biden comments. The rate was 6.4% in January 2021, the month Biden took office.
During an on-camera debate conducted by the progressive organization NowThis News and posted online in late October, Biden told young activists that they “probably know, I just signed a law” on student debt relief contested by Republicans. He added: “It’s over. I voted for it by one or two votes and it stands.”
Biden’s claims are false.
He created his student debt relief initiative through executive action, not legislation, so he didn’t sign it into law and didn’t vote for it by any margin. Since Republicans who opposed the initiative, including those who challenged the initiative in court, called it illegal precisely because it was not passed by Congress, the distinction between law and executive action is a very important fact here.
A White House official told CNN that Biden was referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, which narrowly passed the Senate in August. The official said the Inflation Reduction Act created “room for other critical programs” by reducing the deficit. But Biden certainly didn’t make it clear he was talking about anything other than the student debt initiative.
Biden correctly noted on several occasions in October that natural gas prices have fallen significantly since their peak in June 2022 – although, as always, it’s important to note that presidents have limited impact on natural gas prices. But in an economic speech in New York last week, Biden said: “Today, the most common gas price in America is $3.39 – up from over $5 when I took office.”
Biden’s claim that the most common gas price when he took office was over $5 is not even accurate. The most common price for a gallon of regular natural gas on the day it launched, Jan. 20, 2021, was $2.39, Patrick DeHaan, head of oil analysis at GasBuddy, told CNN. In other words, Biden made it sound like gas prices had fallen significantly during his presidency, when in fact they had risen significantly.
In other recent remarks, Biden discussed the state of gas prices relative to the summer peak of more than $5 a gallon, not relative to when he took office. Regardless, the comment last week was the second this fall in which Biden inaccurately described the price of natural gas — both times in a way that made it sound more impressive.
You can read a longer fact-check here.
Biden revived a claim debunked more than 20 months ago by the Washington Post and then…
