President Joe Biden on Wednesday posted on Twitter that he had cut the U.S. deficit by $1.7 trillion. The post was immediately flagged by Twitter as misinformation citing articles from the Washington Post, Factcheck.org and Politifact.
“The Washington Post rated this claim “highly misleading” and other fact-checkers have disputed its accuracy. The $1.7T spending reduction claimed by Biden was the result of pandemic emergency spending that automatically expired, versus action taken by the president,” Twitter said of the post.
Factcheck.org reported: In recent speeches, President Joe Biden has been misleadingly taking credit for cutting federal deficits by historic amounts, though most of the reduction in deficits is the result of expiring emergency pandemic spending. Deficits fell between fiscal year 2020 and 2021 far less than initially projected after Biden added to them with more emergency pandemic and infrastructure spending.
Politifact noted, “Because tax revenue didn’t keep pace with spending, the deficit surged in 2020 and 2021. The deficit rose from $983 billion before the pandemic in 2019 to about $3.1 trillion in 2020 and $2.8 trillion in 2021.”
The Washington Post labeled Biden’s claims as misinformation.