President Biden’s press conference about the August jobs report included a number of misleading statements. Here are a few.
False Biden Claim: “The Biden plan is working, and we’re getting results. America is on the move again.”
Fact: President Biden has fallen short on his jobs promises.
- President Biden promised that his $1.9 trillion so-called “stimulus” bill would create over 7 million jobs based on forecasts from Moody’s Analytics. Yet the August jobs report shows that the Biden Jobs Deficit is now falling over 600,000 short. He will need over 1.3 million new jobs to cover the current deficit and next month’s expectations.
- Biden has already received “Two Pinnocchios” for claiming credit for jobs progress.
False Biden Claim: “We are creating an environment where employers have to compete for workers by providing higher wages and better benefits. That’s what’s happening. Wages are up especially for working class Americans.” “We’re gonna ease inflationary pressure.”
Fact: With prices rising faster than wages, families’ paychecks are falling behind.
- Real wages have declined every month of the Biden presidency.
- Prices rose the highest in 30 years in July.
- Consumer optimism is continuing to drop at an alarming rate.
- Experts, including former top Democrat economic advisers, are warning that Biden’s economic agenda will lead to greater inflation: “Inflation is here… epic levels of labor shortage as reported by employers…. We’re going to find ourselves with a new normal for inflation above 3 percent…”
False Biden Claim: “We’re going to deliver these investments without raising taxes one cent on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.”
Fact: Biden’s tax increases will fall on the middle class and small businesses according to analysis by the top nonpartisan scorekeeper for Congress on taxes and even the liberal Tax Policy Center.
- Both the left-leaning Tax Policy Center and the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation(JCT) agree working families will see their taxes go up under Biden’s tax plan and that President Biden is violating his pledge.
- The JCT analysis shows that 66.3 percent of the corporate tax burden would be borne by lower- and middle-income taxpayers–including those earning less than $100,000.
- According to the Tax Policy Center, President Biden’s tax plan will raise taxes on 75 percent of middle-class families next year, rising to 95 percent of middle-class families over the long term.
False Biden Claim: “The American Rescue Plan we passed continues to support families, businesses, and communities. [B]enefits that were provided are set to expire next week, states have the option to extend those benefits … The measures we’ve taken so far have brought America out of an economic freefall, steadied us and enable us to grow our economy, even as we combat continue combat COVID.”
Fact: Biden’s endless government checks are sabotaging the jobs recovery.
- Biden’s unemployment benefits have been crushing Main Street businesses with labor shortages and preventing a return to work.
- Research from Goldman Sachs finds clear evidence that had unemployment insurance benefits expired nationwide in July, job growth would have been higher by 400,000 jobs.
False Biden Claim: “We’re going to ask the largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans to finally pay their fair share… It’s about time they begin to pay their fair share.”
Fact: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) simplified the tax code and led to lower tax rates for every income level while increasing the share of federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent.
- The Washington Post has fact checked this claim, noting that “Biden’s sweeping declaration that ‘all of [TCJA] went to folks at the top and corporations that pay no taxes'” is “simply wrong.” The fact checker gave him “Four Pinocchios.”
- According to the Congressional Budget Office, TCJA reduced the average federal tax rate for all filers and the wealthy paid a larger share:
- The bottom 20 percent of earners did better: Their average federal tax rate fell from 1.2 percent to 0 percent – a lower rate than the previous 40-year average.
- The top 1 percent paid a larger share: The share of federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent of households increased from 2017 to 2018.
- Thanks to TCJA, corporate revenues have projected to reach historic highs.
- The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that federal corporate tax revenues will reach a record high in 2023.
- Even the Biden Administration’s own Office of Management and Budget estimate that under TCJA, corporate tax revenues will reach 1.63 percent of GDP in 2025, higher than the average of 1.55 percent of GDP during the 10 years prior to TCJA, including the entirety of the Obama-Biden Administration.