Fact-checkers are criticizing President Biden for a recent speech he gave in Virginia about the economic advancements his government has made while he has been in the White House, Fox News informed.
In his remarks on Thursday at the Steamfitters Local 602 in Springfield, Biden made a number of assertions about the status of the economy that have fact-checkers from CNN and the House Ways and Means Committee raising concerns.
Daniel Dale, a CNN reporter who verifies political statements for the publication, accused Biden of making “false and misleading claims” after his comments.
Biden’s assertion that his government has “financed 700,000 big construction projects – 700,000 all across America” is the one that Dale found to be the most untrue, as the White House has acknowledged.
Biden’s statistic of “700,000” is drastically off; it adds two zeros to the exact number that Biden cited in a speech last week and that the White House has also previously used: According to Dale, the White House changed Biden’s address verbatim to reflect the correct number of 7,000 projects.
Dale also criticized Biden for saying that, when former President Donald Trump left office in January 2021, “just 3.5 million people had gotten — even had their first vaccination.”
When Trump left office in January 2021, approximately 19 million people had actually received their first vaccination against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those who have received two shots are included in the 3.5 million figure.
CNN questioned Biden on his assertion that billionaires “pay basically only 3% of their income now – they pay,” which was later retracted by the White House.
Dale said that the ‘3%’ claim made by Biden is false. Biden misrepresented a 2021 finding from economists in his office that the 400 wealthiest billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their earnings in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018 for the second time in less than a week, Dale wrote. After CNN questioned Biden on Thursday on his “3%” remark, the White House produced a revised official transcript that uses “8%” instead.
Dale emphasized that it’s “very unclear” how much of the credit Biden deserved, citing the vice president’s remarks about the federal debt under Trump and that his government “reduced the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the highest decrease in debt in American history.”
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