On Wednesday, President Joe Biden held a news conference, his second such conference since taking office exactly one year ago.
The president tried taking a victory lap by listing his accomplishments — but he made several false or misleading statements.
We’ve fact-checked Biden’s four big lies from last night.
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HEALTH CARE
During the conference, Biden said, “We just made surprise medical bills illegal in this country.”
That’s false. Biden was referring to a law passed by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
Trump signed Congress’ consumer protection law in December 2020. In effect, he banned insurance companies from “surprise billing,” a billing practice long forbidden by public programs like Medicare. Trump presided over this rare act bipartisan cooperation on health care.
Yet, Biden was taking credit for the accomplishments of the Trump administration… or maybe he was just using a grossly expanded definition of the word “we.”
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PANDEMIC
Last night, Biden said of the pandemic, “I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.”
The facts don’t bear that out.
Biden was briefed about the test shortage in October, according to a shocking report from Vanity Fair. Slow Joe didn’t act until December.
Plus, Biden didn’t even live up to his own expectations.
Biden said at a Jul. 4 event, “We’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” In the same speech, he acknowledged the delta variant in its infancy, but he failed to predict the full extent of delta’s ravages.
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ECONOMY
In front of reporters, Biden said, “We created 6 million new jobs, more jobs in one year than any time before.”
In fact, Biden was manipulating the statistics to make unemployment appear lower.
He also spoke about employment in raw numbers: “6 million new jobs.” He should have spoken about employment as a percentage, because of population growth.
On a percentage basis, the number of jobs in the U.S. grew 4.5% in 2021. That is still a sizeable increase — the biggest since 1978 — but not a record-breaker.
What’s more, Biden claimed responsibility for an economic rebound that first began in May 2020, under Trump.
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BUILD BACK BETTER
Biden spoke about his two signature bills: the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed in November and the trillion-dollar Build Back Better Act still in Congress
He said, “It will do all of this without raising a single penny in taxes on people making under $400,000 a year or raising the deficit. In fact, my plan cuts the deficit and boosts the economy by getting more people into the workforce.”
Oddly enough, Biden has kept his promise to avoid raising taxes on Americans making less than $400,000.
However, Biden was playing with numbers, to spend money while making the deficit look like nothing.
Far from “cutting” the deficit, the Build Back Better Act would increase the national debt by $160 billion in 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office found in November.
The CBO says that Biden lied.
Plus, even if Biden is somehow right his remaining calculations… he’s already over budget.
Biden already passed one of the two bills. That one bill has already increased the deficit, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Biden ignored these inconvenient facts last night.
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Of course, Biden also made several misleading statements about inflation. Even the liberal-leaning Post has pointed that out.
But Americans don’t trust Biden on inflation, anyway.
The Associated Press and The Horn editorial team.