OPINION:
Pinocchio is so closely associated with falsehoods that he’s now an eponym, with the severity of lies measured in “Pinocchios.” Likewise, every time President Biden brags about his economy, he can’t help himself from saying things that are blatantly untrue.
His recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece delivered three big whoppers on his economic record.
Mr. Biden’s first misrepresentation is his claim to have “created” millions of jobs. The government-imposed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic effectively made it illegal for tens of millions of Americans to go to work, and that spiked job losses to unprecedented levels.
People were simply returning to work after the government forced them to temporarily stay home. How is that “job creation”?
If Mr. Biden wants to count the reopening of businesses after forced closings as job creation, then it’s a hole below the water line for another talking point of his: that he has created more jobs than any other president.
By Mr. Biden’s logic, former President Donald Trump added an average of 1.4 million jobs per month after the initial lockdowns, while Mr. Biden has added an average of less than half a million jobs per month.
Furthermore, given pre-pandemic employment rates, the economy is still missing at least 2 million jobs — hardly a strong recovery. In fact, Mr. Biden has presided over an unprecedented drop in labor productivity.
Meanwhile, the jobs numbers that Mr. Biden has been bragging about show strong evidence of double counting, such as when a person has to get a second or even a third job to make ends meet. That has goosed the jobs numbers, but it doesn’t mean more people are employed.
The second big fabrication is Mr. Biden’s oft-repeated line about reducing the deficit. After massive government spending in the name of COVID-19 relief in 2020, the deficit ballooned to $3.3 trillion. But with the expiration of trillions in one-time spending measures, the deficit in 2021 was set to fall dramatically. In fact, if Mr. Biden had let spending fall back to pre-pandemic levels, there would’ve been a surplus.
Instead, Mr. Biden pushed for trillions in new spending, and the deficit came in at $2.6 trillion for 2021. And despite federal tax receipts of $4.7 trillion in 2022, 39% higher than pre-pandemic levels, Mr. Biden’s added spending helped fuel a $1.4 trillion deficit last year.
And things are getting worse, not better. The deficit thus far in fiscal 2023 is almost three times as high as the deficit in the same period last fiscal year. Interest payments on the debt rose to $62 billion in April, eclipsing most other categories of spending, including defense.
Mr. Biden’s third economic misrepresentation is the least defensible of all: inflation. The president brags about bringing prices down from historic highs, but that is damning with faint praise since he helped set the inflationary inferno with his profligate spending. Just one example is Mr. Biden’s touting of the drop in gasoline prices, but gasoline is still more than 50 cents a gallon higher than it ever was under Mr. Trump.
Inflation has destroyed purchasing power and reduced real wages, especially for lower-income earners. Yet Mr. Biden claims “real income for the bottom half of earners is up by 3.4% since I took office.” That is completely false.
Under Mr. Biden, the bottom 25% of income earners have seen their real incomes fall 2.3%, while the second income quartile has fallen 3.9%. That means the two groups that make up the bottom half of earners have both seen their real incomes decrease, not increase. There is no excuse for such a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
Mr. Biden claims he has given “low-income Americans more breathing room,” but with falling real wages and a higher cost of living, the only breathing room Mr. Biden is providing is under water.
Every politician may stretch the truth from time to time, but Mr. Biden’s economic statements take the cake. If he keeps it up, his name will become so synonymous with economic lies that they will start being measured in “Bidens” instead of “Pinocchios.”
• E.J. Antoni is a public finance economist at The Heritage Foundation.
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