It was President Joe Biden’s annual State of the Union speech. A CNN fact check revealed that while the majority of his comments were true, there were a few that were untrue, deceptive, or missing important details. Reiterating his well-known, deceptive brag, Biden claimed to have decreased the federal budget deficit. However, he did not clarify that the fall was mostly caused by emergency pandemic expenditure from President Donald Trump’s administration that expired on time. He overstated the effect of the 15% corporate minimum tax he signed into law when he incorrectly asserted that “not anymore” would allow large corporations to pay no federal income tax.
Fiscal landscape
Citing another estimate from his administration’s experts, he falsely claimed that it represented the actual federal tax rate that billionaires paid. Additionally, he omitted context when talking about Covid-19 fatalities, implying that a lot more people died during the Trump administration than there actually were. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama didn’t say anything in her official Republican response to Sen. Biden’s speech. However, Britt did misstate that inflation is at a 40-year low in the present tense; this is no longer the case. During his State of the Union speech, Biden attacked the budgetary policies of the outgoing president Donald Trump, saying, “They added more to the national debt than any presidential term in American history.”
Discrepancies
Under Biden, the national debt has kept rising. According to official data, as of the day before Biden’s speech, it was around $34.4 trillion, up roughly 24% during his presidency. Biden praised his administration’s initiatives to lessen the burden of prescription medication expenses, much as he has done throughout the campaign trail. He also mentioned the savings to taxpayers in his speech. Referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, which included several initiatives to lower medicine prices, Biden remarked, “That’s not just saving seniors money, it’s saving taxpayers money.” “The federal deficit was reduced by $160 billion.” Medicare was given the first-ever authority to bargain over the cost of some expensive prescription medications by the Inflation Reduction Act. The CBO projects that this policy will save $98.5 billion over the course of ten years. The first ten medications are being negotiated. The final pricing will become effective in 2026 and be made public by September. Additionally, if pharmaceutical companies raise the cost of any particular prescription at a pace faster than inflation, they are required by law to reimburse the federal government. The CBO projects that this will save $63.2 billion over the course of ten years.
Evaluation of claims
A tabular form of facts
| Claim | Evaluation |
| Biden claimed that he had reduced the national debt by more than $1 trillion. | Although Biden has overseen lower deficits than Trump, the deficit is still more under Biden than it was before the epidemic. Although there was a decrease in the deficit under Biden’s administration, it is still higher than it was under Trump. Under Biden, the national debt has accumulated more and more. |
| In his first two years in office, Biden claimed to have cut the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion. | Biden’s assertion is untrue since he hasn’t reduced the national debt, which has skyrocketed during his administration. Over his first two fiscal years, the deficit decreased by $1.7 trillion, yet his actions have increased the nation’s debt. |
| In 2021 and 2022, Biden presented a tax policy as the reason for the budget’s improvement and erroneously stated that he oversaw a “real surplus.” | The tax policy that Biden cited would not go into effect until 2023, and there isn’t a real surplus since the federal government is still running a budget deficit that is well over $1 trillion. Biden’s comments are untrue. |
| In his first year in office, Biden claimed to have cut the federal deficit by $350 billion, and by the end of September of the current fiscal year, he predicted that the deficit will have been lowered by an additional $1.5 trillion. | Even while Biden’s administration has seen a lower deficit than Trump’s, some contend that Biden is misrepresenting the facts by claiming credit for the decrease in the deficit. Under Biden, the deficit has exceeded expectations, even if it has decreased somewhat from prior years. |
Conclusion
In conclusion, Subtracting government spending for a given year from federal revenue (mostly tax revenues) yields the federal deficit. There is a deficit for the year if spending is higher than revenue, and a surplus exists if revenue is higher than spending. The government debt can only decline when there is a surplus, not when there is a smaller deficit. Reducing the deficit merely results in a slower rate of debt growth.
