Sarah Westwood of the Washington Examiner tests the truth of the president’s pronouncements.
Speaking to union workers in Maryland on Wednesday, President Joe Biden took aim at House Republicans’ request that he negotiate spending cuts in exchange for a debt limit hike as he sought to defend his work on the economy.
Biden relied on several misleading claims during an address aimed largely at discrediting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and the GOP plan McCarthy unveiled earlier in the afternoon.
Here are some of the instances in which Biden stretched the truth.
‘Putin’s war in Ukraine has disrupted energy supplies and food supplies, causing the price of everything from eggs to wheat to go up’
While the Russian invasion of Ukraine did affect grain prices last year, the spike in the cost of eggs has little to do with Ukraine. …
… ‘In my first two years in office, I brought the deficit down by a record $1.7 trillion’
This is a common claim Biden has made when defending his administration’s record on the economy.
Biden did indeed lower the deficit during his first two years in office — but not because he focused on fiscal responsibility.
Instead, the deficit fell because much of the unprecedented pandemic spending that began in 2020 under Biden’s predecessor expired, such as the end of enhanced unemployment benefits. …
… ‘Under my plan, no one earning less than $400,000 has seen nor will see as long as I’m president a single solitary penny raised in their taxes’
Biden has maintained this line about taxes since the days of the 2020 campaign.
Regarding individual income tax brackets, Biden has not violated that pledge nor proposed a change that would.
But his proposed increases to corporate tax rates have caused some Republicans in the past to accuse him of pushing tax increases that would effectively tax people making less than $400,000 a year.
