CNN actually fact-checked Joe Biden over false statements he made during his speech in Las Vegas yesterday.
Specifically, they called him out for his lies on reducing the deficit for the last two years, which he said was due to his new corporate minimum tax.
The problem is that his minimum tax only went into effect this year.
Here’s more:
President Joe Biden falsely said on Wednesday that his new corporate minimum tax is the reason the federal budget deficit declined in 2021 and 2022. In reality, that tax didn’t even come into effect until the beginning of 2023.
Biden has repeatedly taken credit for reducing the deficit in 2021 and 2022 even though experts have said that the vast majority of this reduction occurred simply because emergency Covid-19 pandemic spending from 2020 expired as planned – and that Biden’s own initiatives made the deficits higher than they otherwise would be.
We’ve described Biden’s previous deficit boasts as misleading or missing key context. But he went further in his Wednesday speech in Las Vegas on lowering prescription drug costs, delivering a version of the story that is just not true.
Biden said: “And by the way, you know everybody said, well, how was I able to have these new programs and still cut the deficit $1.7 trillion the last two years? Well, it’s pretty – pretty straightforward. There were 550 companies of the Fortune 500 that made $40 billion that didn’t pay a penny in tax – zero, nothing – in taxes. So I said the – you know, outrageous. And we got votes for it. I said they ought to pay a minimum of 15%. Fifteen percent. That’s less than you all pay. And guess what? It allowed me to cut the deficit.”
Facts First: Biden’s “pretty straightforward” story about deficit reduction over the last two years is false. Though the 15% corporate minimum tax Biden signed into law in the August 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce deficits in 2023 and beyond, the tax only took effect on January 1, 2023, so it did not reduce the deficit in 2021 or 2022. Again, experts say the deficit fell in 2021 and 2022 primarily because of expiring pandemic spending, not Biden’s own policies, which had the net effect of worsening the deficit.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment for this article.
I’m surprised that CNN is actually calling out Biden on this, however this is just an article.
I don’t know if the are covering this on-air throughout the day or not, but my guess is they aren’t do much with it.
But even so, I’m glad someone at CNN is fact-checking Biden. They could and should be doing this nearly every day because that’s how often he lies.