Biden claims 2021/2022 deficit reduced by taxes that didn't take effect until 2023

[CivilDiscourse]

I'm sure Starlight will claim that perhaps the mere passing of the taxes, scared the deficit to lower levels like he did with the deliberately mis-named Inflation Reduction Act.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/politics/fact-check-biden-deficit-minimum-tax/index.html

Fact check: Biden falsely credits tax that took effect in 2023 for deficit reduction in 2021 and 2022



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.


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.

aya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates deficit reduction, noted in a Thursday email that “corporations won’t start paying the minimum tax until this year.” She said the fact that Biden “continues to take credit for the deficit dropping between 2021 and 2022 – which happened entirely due to the expiration of temporary COVID measures – is cause for concern.”

Biden also got a key number wrong in this section of the Las Vegas speech. As he has correctly said on numerous previous occasions, it was 55 big companies, not 550 companies as he said this time, that didn’t pay any federal income tax in their previous fiscal year, according to an analysis published in 2021 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal think tank.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

© Copyright Original Source

[rogue06]

Old Joe is back to making wildly bizarre and demonstrably false claims yet again, including one where he says he's supported gay marriage since he was a teenager. One look at his voting records shows that is a load of codswallop.

But, as you said, the economic ignorati will parrot the claim on the news which will be picked up by the left as a talking point.

[Mountain Man]

Joe can barely remember what day of the week it is. You expect him to be able to keep his years straight?

[Sparko]

I have noticed that democrats have no compunction about telling outright and obvious lies. Same as the Russian and Chinese governments (Russians: We didn't knock down your drone, it just fell out of the sky! Chinese: That balloon was just a civilian weather balloon, not spy balloon!)

They just don't care. It's like "sure we are lying, what are you gonna do about it? "

[rogue06]

I have noticed that democrats have no compunction about telling outright and obvious lies. Same as the Russian and Chinese governments (Russians: We didn't knock down your drone, it just fell out of the sky! Chinese: That balloon was just a civilian weather balloon, not spy balloon!)

They just don't care. It's like "sure we are lying, what are you gonna do about it? "

During the height of the Cold War the Russians had the reputation of not only lying about everything but didn't care in the least if they got caught. They'd just laugh it off and immediately tell another lie.

[mossrose]

Maybe Joe has taken a page out of Justin's scribbler........"the budget will balance itself!"

[Starlight]

Biden's policies are so powerful they work in the past too. Obviously.

[CivilDiscourse]

Biden's policies are so powerful they work in the past too. Obviously.

I have no doubt that you sincerely believe it.

[rogue06]

Joe can barely remember what day of the week it is. You expect him to be able to keep his years straight?

But he can remember like it was yesterday his "epiphany" when he was a teenager and saw two well-dressed men kissing and decided then he was for gay marriage. I mean forget the intervening decades when he voted against it, supported the Defense of Marriage Act, and made several remarks demonstrating his opposition.

L.G.B..jpg

If I had to bet, I'd say old Joe is channeling some TV show or movie he saw and now thinks that was part of his life.

[Sparko]

But he can remember like it was yesterday his "epiphany" when he was a teenager and saw two well-dressed men kissing and decided then he was for gay marriage. I mean forget the intervening decades when he voted against it, supported the Defense of Marriage Act, and made several remarks demonstrating his opposition.

L.G.B..jpg

If I had to bet, I'd say old Joe is channeling some TV show or movie he saw and now thinks that was part of his life.

Like I said in the other thread, democrats (and Biden) have no problem with telling outright and obvious lies. I guess they think their base is so gullible they can gaslight them by saying anything and they will believe it. It obviously works on Starlight and he isn't even American.

[rogue06]

Like I said in the other thread, democrats (and Biden) have no problem with telling outright and obvious lies. I guess they think their base is so gullible they can gaslight them by saying anything and they will believe it. It obviously works on Starlight and he isn't even American.

When you're desperate to believe, even a shoddily crafted lie more full of holes than Swiss cheese will do.

[CivilDiscourse]

When you're desperate to believe, even a shoddily crafted lie more full of holes than Swiss cheese will do.

What I've found, more often is the two parties deal with blatant lies differently.

Democrats pretty much ignore their own lies. Their candidate will lie 10 ways from Sunday, and they'll simply not acknowledge it, change the subject, or laugh it off as inconsequential (see @starlight's defense of the Inflation Reduction Act).

Republicans, on the other hand, seem to lean in, as if a lie isn't a lie if they can repeat it enough, or if they can find a conspiracy. It doesn't even matter if the lie is actually all that important. One example is the numbers at Trump's inauguration. The weather wasn't great, trump was polarizing, and more people supported "republican" more than the supported "Donald Trump". It's not surprising that all of that together put out a less than stellar crowd size. However, Trump's ego wouldn't let that happen, so he declared the numbers were bigger, and that lead to many debates to this day, including conspiracy theories, and wild theories all about how trump was right, and the official counts were just wrong.

[rogue06]

What I've found, more often is the two parties deal with blatant lies differently.

Democrats pretty much ignore their own lies. Their candidate will lie 10 ways from Sunday, and they'll simply not acknowledge it, change the subject, or laugh it off as inconsequential (see @starlight's defense of the Inflation Reduction Act).

Republicans, on the other hand, seem to lean in, as if a lie isn't a lie if they can repeat it enough, or if they can find a conspiracy. It doesn't even matter if the lie is actually all that important. One example is the numbers at Trump's inauguration. The weather wasn't great, trump was polarizing, and more people supported "republican" more than the supported "Donald Trump". It's not surprising that all of that together put out a less than stellar crowd size. However, Trump's ego wouldn't let that happen, so he declared the numbers were bigger, and that lead to many debates to this day, including conspiracy theories, and wild theories all about how trump was right, and the official counts were just wrong.

I think part of the latter is the result of the sheer number of bald-faced lies that the left kept telling about Trump (you can even ignore the campaign and start with his first day in office and the story of his removing MLK Jr.'s bust from the oval office), that after awhile some start to assume that even true stories are yet more fake news.

[Mountain Man]

Like I said in the other thread, democrats (and Biden) have no problem with telling outright and obvious lies. I guess they think their base is so gullible they can gaslight them by saying anything and they will believe it. It obviously works on Starlight and he isn't even American.

I have seen a concerning number of liberals uncritically regurgitate the latest Democrat talking point even when it flatly contradicts the previous talking point. They are either unaware of or entirely untroubled by the cognitive dissonance required to behave in this manner.

[rogue06]

I have seen a concerning number of liberals uncritically regurgitate the latest Democrat talking point even when it flatly contradicts the previous talking point. They are either unaware of or entirely untroubled by the cognitive dissonance required to behave in this manner.

Had a boss like that. He literally spent the morning during a meeting playing cheerleader for a new policy that the company was implementing, trying to convince us that it was the best thing since sliced bread. Ten minutes later he returned to inform us the policy was scrapped and we were to continue with the old one -- which he now told us was much better than the one they were wanting to implement.