Fact checkers target Biden for ‘false and misleading’ statements about the economy

President Biden he is facing pushback from fact-checkers for a recent speech he gave in Virginia about the economic progress his administration has made during his tenure in the White House.

Speaking at Steamfitters Local 602 in Springfield on Thursday, Biden made multiple claims about the current state of the economy that have fact-checkers, both from CNN and the House Ways and Means Committee, sounding the alarm.

Following his comments, CNN reporter Daniel Dale, who works to fact-check the outlet’s political claims, accused Biden of making “false and misleading claims.”

“Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading, or lacking critical context, while others were correct.” Dale wrote in an article examining Biden’s comments.

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Topping Dale’s fact check list was Biden’s claim that his administration has “funded 700,000 major construction projects, 700,000 across the United States,” which the White House He has admitted that is not the case.

“Biden’s ‘700,000’ number is wildly inaccurate; add two extra zeros to the correct number Biden used in a speech last week and the White House used earlier as well: 7,000 projects,” Dale wrote, noting that the White House altered Biden’s number. speech transcript to reflect the exact number.

Dale also took aim at Biden for his claim that “only 3.5 million people had even gotten their first vaccine” when they formed president donald trump he left office in January 2021.

The actual number of people who had received their first shot at COVID-19 when Trump left office in January 2021 it was about 19 million, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 3.5 million figure refers to those who had received two rounds of the shot.

Biden also faced scrutiny from CNN for his claim that billionaires “pay pretty much only 3% of their income now, 3%, they pay,” a comment later rejected by the White House.

“Biden’s ‘3%’ claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden incorrectly described a Finding 2021 from economists in his administration that the 400 richest billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018,” Dale wrote. House released a corrected official transcript that uses ‘8%’ in its place.”

Pointing to comments made by Biden about federal debt under Trump and that his administration “cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest debt reduction in American history,” Dale insisted it is “highly questionable” how much credit deserves Biden.

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“Biden’s bragging leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, including a record drop of $1.4 trillion in 2022. , but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction,” Dale wrote. “Biden failed to mention that the main reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had spiked to a record level under Trump in 2020 due to bipartisan pandemic emergency spending, and then fell as expected when the spending expired according to than planned. Independent analysts say that Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of increasing current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.”

In addition to CNN, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee Biden’s targeted remarks Thursday with a fact check, stating that the president “didn’t let the facts get in the way of his speech in Springfield.”

“While Biden claimed the economy is growing strongly, the latest economic growth report reveals that the economy under his administration’s policies has fallen short of expectations in seven of the past eight economic growth reports,” the committee wrote. “Indeed, the whole of 2022 was worse for economic growth than expected. And more trouble lies ahead, according to the latest report from the Leading Economic Index.”

Listing five recent “misleading” claims by the president that the committee found fault with, the Republicans wrote: “President Biden has been making inaccurate accusations about Republicans and instilling fear to scare seniors when Republicans have made it clear that We’re not going to touch your retirement security.” Biden has also made Medicare and Social Security worse, without protecting them. Medicare premiums have risen for seniors since 2020, while the ongoing Biden inflation crisis has pushed Social Security toward insolvency.”

Biden recently faced off FactCheck.org reviews about claims he had made about unemployment during his speech at the US Conference of Mayors winter meeting last week.

During the speech, according to FactCheck.org, Biden “spinned up a statistic on the number of people receiving unemployment benefits, misidentifying it simply as the number of people ‘out of work.'”

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“His comment leaves the false impression that unemployment fell by more than 16 million people on his watch, when the decline was actually less than 5 million,” the nonprofit website concluded. “And a big reason for the big decline in unemployment benefits is the expiration of pandemic-related expansions of those benefits.”

“Two years ago this week, 18 million people were out of work, two years ago this week,” Biden said at the conference. “Now that number is below 1.6 million, near the lowest level in decades.”

“The White House transcript notes that the line drew applause,” FactCheck.org stated. “But it’s not exact. According to the Bureau of Labor StatisticsThe number of people ‘out of work’, or officially unemployed, in the US in January 2021 was approximately 10.2 million, and the number in December 2022 was 5.7 million.”