President Biden’s State of the Union address was full of lies and mistruths. They betray the desperation of a president with 38 percent job approval on the economy, 16 percent of the population better off than before he took office, and most of his own party wanting a different White House nominee in 2024.
Here are his seven biggest lies:
1: “Take-home pay has gone up.”
I predicted last week that Biden would utter this lie. Real wages have fallen every month for nearly two straight years under his administration as historic inflation swamps nominal wages and destroys living standards. According to the most recent data, annual inflation is rising 50 percent faster than average wages. The truth is that Americans are getting poorer, something we are reminded of every time we visit the grocery store, where prices have increased by 20 percent since Biden took office.
2. “We have created a record 12 million new jobs.”
Biden tries to count the jobs backfilled post-pandemic as “new” jobs, but these positions were already created and merely temporarily abandoned due to COVID-19. In reality, Biden has created 2.7 million net new jobs above what Donald Trump created. This job creation is only 60 percent of the 4.5 million net new jobs that Trump created in his first two years in office.
3: “[I have presided over] the largest deficit reduction in American history.”
Again, Biden is trying to take advantage of the moderation from the unique pandemic baseline. In reality, Biden has presided over the largest two-year deficit — $4.2 trillion — in American history. While it’s true the annual deficit is lower than during the once-in-a-century pandemic in 2020, due to the expiration of pandemic-era spending, that’s hardly something to cheer. In fact, Biden’s reckless spending has prevented the deficit from falling below the outrageous $1 trillion mark in 2022.
4: “Two years ago, our economy was reeling.”
President Trump presided over the fastest economic recovery in American history, with the economy expanding by 11 percent in his last six months in office. Unfortunately, instead of simply continuing Trump’s policies and riding his coattails to a rapid resurgence, Biden seized the opportunity to pass several trillion dollars’ worth of unnecessary spending that fueled historic inflation, putting a tremendous burden on small business owners and ordinary Americans.
5: Oil companies have “invested too little of th[eir] profit to increase domestic production and keep gas prices down.”
Oil companies would like to expand production to take advantage of high oil prices, but the Biden administration’s green energy policies make this very difficult. According to Heritage Foundation energy analyst Katie Tubb, the administration “has proposed or finalized regulations that restrict nearly every aspect of the oil industry: financing and private-sector investment, exploration and production, pipeline construction and operation, and consumer use.” Biden has issued the fewest drilling permits since the end of World War II. As a result, oil production is still lower than before the pandemic, and gas prices are far higher.
6: “Now, thanks to all we’ve done, we’re exporting American products.”
The same day as the State of the Union address, the government released 2022 trade figures showing the country hit a record trade deficit of almost $1 trillion last year. That’s up 12.2 percent compared to 2021, precisely the opposite direction of Biden’s claim. This unprecedented trade deficit is a direct consequence of Biden’s bad policies, including climate and labor overregulation, that make it expensive to manufacture goods in America.
7: The wealthy don’t “pay their fair share.”
This stale Democrat talking point seems to make it into every stump speech. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. The top 1 percent of highest-earning Americans pay nearly 50 percent of the nation’s income taxes — about twice their “share” of national income. According to a WalletHub analysis, the top 100 American corporations pay an effective tax rate of nearly 20 percent. (Smaller businesses pay even more.) These liabilities don’t include the high tax bills paid by companies’ shareholders and executives. The American tax system is one of the most progressive in the developed world, with job creators paying far more than their fair share, despite Democrats’ nonstop claims to the contrary.
Don’t expect the mainstream media “fact-checkers” to call Biden out on these lies. These are left-wing opinion journalists masquerading as independent truth arbiters to help advance the Democrats’ agenda. For example, the Democratic Party broadsheet known as the New York Times claimed, “Mr. Biden’s speech contained no outright falsehoods.”
Yet, judging by Biden’s low approval numbers, the public can see through his lies just fine. His State of the Union address is no exception.
Alfredo Ortiz is president and CEO of Job Creators Network and author of “The Real Race Revolutionaries: How Minority Entrepreneurship Can Overcome America’s Racial and Economic Divides.”