Joe Biden’s White House once again was fact-checked on Twitter on Monday after trying to take credit for the “largest” one-year cut to the federal budget deficit in American history, Fox News reports.
“The Biden-Harris Administration lowered the deficit with the single largest one-year reduction in American history,” the White House tweeted Monday.
The Biden-Harris Administration lowered the deficit with the single largest one-year reduction in American history.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 22, 2022
The Twitter community was quick to add context and notes to the claim.
“COVID-driven deficits in both FY20 & 21 were roughly double the previous record (09), making the drop to FY22 sizable,” the Community Note states.
“But the FY22 deficit is still the 4th largest in history and is 41% larger than FY19,” Twitter users pointed out.
From Fox News:
Community Notes, previously called Birdwatch, is a feature on Twitter that lets eligible users sign up to provide missing context to factual claims. The program is not managed by Twitter. Instead, users rate notes they find helpful and over time can earn the ability to write.
“Community Notes doesn’t work by majority rules. To identify notes that are helpful to a wide range of people, notes require agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in their past ratings. This helps prevent one-sided ratings,” Twitter explains in its Community Notes Guide.
In this case, Twitter’s community observed the White House’s deficit claim fails to note that deficit spending has reached record highs under the Trump and Biden administrations, largely because of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between fiscal years 2019 and 2021, federal spending increased by about 50% due to pandemic-related legislation, according to the Treasury Department.
The FY2020 deficit was $3.13 trillion, followed by a $2.77 trillion deficit in FY2021. While the deficit in FY2022 was $1.38 trillion – a decrease of nearly 50% from the year prior –Biden’s administration is still running the fourth-largest budget deficit of all-time.
This wasn’t the first time the Biden White House was fact-checked on Twitter; last month, Joe was called out on a claim about the Inflation Reduction Act.
Let me give you the facts.
In 2020, 55 corporations made $40 billion. And they paid zero in federal taxes.
My Inflation Reduction Act puts an end to this.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 29, 2022
Twitter provided additional context to Joe’s tweet.
“The Inflation Reduction Act imposed a minimum tax on corporations with average pre-tax earnings greater than $1 billion,” the addition explained, adding links to source information from Reuters and a government website. “Out of the 55 corporations that the tweet references, only 14 had earnings greater than $1 billion and would be eligible under Biden’s new law,” the Twitter context added.
More over at Fox News:
Biden White House fact-checked by Twitter users again for exaggerated deficit claim https://t.co/b5Pjz9YCPT
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2022
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