Biden repeats 'misleading' claim he cut America's budget deficit by $1.7 trillion: 'Bottomless Pinocchios'
A liberal Washington Post fact-checker previously awarded Biden a 'Bottomless Pinocchio' for the claim
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President Biden is off to repeating – once again – what has been labeled a "highly misleading" claim about the federal budget deficit.
During a Thursday speech in West Columbia, South Carolina touting what he says is the success of his administration's economic policies, Biden claimed he had reduced the federal government's budget deficit by $1.7 trillion since taking office in January 2021.
"And by the way, parenthetically, I want you to hear about the deficit. I cut the deficit $1.7 trillion in two years. Nobody's ever done that – cut the debt $1.7 [trillion]," Biden told the crowd gathered at manufacturing company Flex LTD.
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Biden has made the same claim on numerous occasions and, in April, earned a "Bottomless Pinocchio" rating for it from The Washington Post's liberal chief fact-checker, Glenn Kessler.
Kessler, who called the claim "highly misleading," previously gave Biden "three Pinocchios" when he made a different version of the claim in September of last year.
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"He keeps saying it over and over," Kessler wrote in April. "By our count, at least 30 times since June he’s taken credit for reducing the budget deficit by $1.7 trillion."
Kessler wrote that the additional pandemic relief funds enacted by Biden, as well as other new policies, caused a "more modest decline in the deficit" than was projected for 2021 and 2022.
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"All told, in those two years Biden increased the national debt about $850 billion more than originally projected," he said.
"In other words, again the data shows the deficit picture has worsened under Biden," he added.
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In May, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed that the federal government under Biden had run a near-$1 trillion federal deficit in the "first seven months of fiscal year 2023." It found that in those months alone, the federal government had racked up $928,000,000,000.
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Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Houston Keene contributed to this report.