Fact check: Deconstructing Biden’s claim that ‘I reduced the federal deficit’
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President Joe Biden has been taking credit for reducing the federal budget deficit, the annual gap between the money the government takes in and the money the government spends.
“Let me remind you again: I reduced the federal deficit,” Biden said in a speech on Wednesday. “All the talk about the deficit from my Republican friends, I love it. I’ve reduced it $350 billion in my first year in office. And we’re on track to reduce it, by the end of September, by another 1 trillion, 500 billion dollars — the largest drop ever.”
Biden’s figures for both the 2021 fiscal year (which ran through last September) and the ongoing 2022 fiscal year (which runs through the coming September) are accurate, though the $1.5 trillion figure for 2022 is a projection. But some experts on fiscal policy say Biden is distorting reality when he claims that he is personally responsible for the deficit going down.
The deficit has been smaller under the Biden administration than it was at the end of President Donald Trump’s tenure. But the deficit has been bigger under the Biden administration than the nonpartisan federal Congressional Budget Office had projected it would be if the Biden-era federal government stuck with the laws that were in effect when Trump left office in early 2021.
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