President Biden is off to repeating – once again – what has been labeled a “highly misleading” claim about the federal budget deficit.
During a Thursday speech in West Columbia, South Carolina touting what he says is the success of his administration’s economic policies, Biden claimed he had reduced the federal government’s budget deficit by $1.7 trillion since taking office in January 2021.
“And by the way, parenthetically, I want you to hear about the deficit. I cut the deficit $1.7 trillion in two years. Nobody’s ever done that – cut the debt $1.7 [trillion],” Biden told the crowd gathered at manufacturing company Flex LTD.
The entrance to The Washington Post corporate building in Washington D.C. (ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
Kessler wrote that the additional pandemic relief funds enacted by Biden, as well as other new policies, caused a “more modest decline in the deficit” than was projected for 2021 and 2022.
“All told, in those two years Biden increased the national debt about $850 billion more than originally projected,” he said.
In May, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed that the federal government under Biden had run a near-$1 trillion federal deficit in the “first seven months of fiscal year 2023.” It found that in those months alone, the federal government had racked up $928,000,000,000.