When President Joe Biden stands before Congress and issues his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he will proclaim victory on the nation’s economy. Most Americans are going to wonder what country he’s talking about.
Yes, the jobs market is strong, and that’s good news. But sorry, Mr. President: The American economy is not strong. It isn’t even good.
The last two years have been pretty rotten on almost every metric: the squeeze on family finances, inflation, immigration, declining test scores in schools, the budget deficit and debt, out-of-control government.
Here are six fibs you’re very likely to hear the president recite Tuesday night. They should be tagged with the label of the left’s favorite word this year: “disinformation.”
1) Biden has reduced the budget deficit by $1.4 trillion.
Actually, no president in modern times even comes close to Biden in terms of fiscal recklessness. In his first two years, the national debt has risen by more than $4.2 trillion. That’s more than in any two-year period in American history.
The deficit shot into the fiscal stratosphere of $2.8 trillion in his first year in office, and in 2022 it was still at one of history’s highest levels, $1.4 trillion. Last year, our debt as a share of our gross domestic product hit an all-time high of 129%. Biden is like a schoolkid celebrating an improved report card because the first semester he got an F but the second semester a D-.
2) Biden inherited an economy in freefall.
Wrong. When COVID hit these shores in early 2020, the economy was shut down in the face of the once-in-a-half-century pandemic. But by 2020’s second half, the economy soared by more than 20%, and millions of Americans were moving back into their jobs. This was a historic recovery.
One week after the election, thanks to Operation Warp Speed, the COVID vaccine was announced, which set the table for an even stronger recovery. Instead, the economy has been limping forward with a weakling economic growth rate last year of 1.5%.
3) Inflation was high when Biden entered office.
Huh? The average inflation rate during the Trump presidency was 2%, and in January 2021, the month Biden entered office, inflation was 1.4%. Eighteen months later, in summer 2022, inflation rose above 9% — the highest in 40 years. It ended the year at 6.5%. Food prices are still so high that CNBC just reported: “Amid food inflation, more shoppers turn to dollar stores for groceries.”
4) Biden has brought down gas prices.
When President Donald Trump left office, the gas price was $2.59 a gallon nationally. In June 2022, it was nearly double, a modern-day high of $5.004 a gallon. Today gas is $3.48 a gallon — roughly $1 a gallon higher than when Biden entered office. And according to Gas Buddy, which provides real-time prices and projections, gas at the pump is expected to rise back to $4 a gallon this year.
5) Biden is doing all he can to secure the border.
This may be the whopper of them all. Since Biden took office, he’s issued some 90 executive orders undoing Trump’s successful border-enforcement policies — most notably stopping wall construction on the southern border and even suspending the successful “Stay in Mexico” policy (a move so wrongheaded he was recently forced to reverse it). In 2021, there were 1.7 million border encounters, the highest ever until 2022, when that number surged above 2 million.
6) Biden is increasing domestic oil and gas production.
Wrong. A 2022 Committee to Unleash Prosperity study by the University of Chicago’s Casey Mulligan found that oil production would be 2 to 3 million barrels a day higher if Biden had simply followed the Trump energy plan.
America would have produced nearly $200 billion more oil last year if not for Biden’s war on fossil fuels. We wouldn’t have had to release one teaspoon of oil from our strategic reserve. Trump issued permits for drilling on 100 million acres of federal land. Biden has issued fewer drilling permits than any president since World War II’s end.
We’ll see how many of these fact-free statements Biden repeats in his State of the Union speech. But it’s highly likely the best GOP response by Sarah Huckabee Sanders should be: “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He served as a senior economic adviser to Donald Trump.