Karine Jean-Pierre Falsely Claims Biden Lowered Deficit Even As Deficit Expected To Double
Karine Jean-Pierre maintains Biden has lowered the deficit (not true) — even as the federal deficit is expected to double

On 9/5/2023, during White House briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called President Biden “fiscally responsible” — but couldn’t explain away the latest dismal deficit figures, saying dismissively, “volatile” and “Talk to an economist.”

KJP brushed off statistics indicating the federal deficit is on track to double this year, blaming the tenuous situation on “volatile” factors — but then refusing to be more specific. “Deficits from year to year can be volatile, and so that’s kind of how we have tracked that, but the reality is the president has a real plan, as we have laid out multiple times, to reduce the deficit,” Jean-Pierre claimed at her regular briefing in response to a question from a Time reporter.

The scribe followed up, “What is the reason it’s going up, though? Why is the deficit increasing?”
Jean-Pierre responded, “I just said, it can be year to year — it can be very volatile.”
A reporter interjected, “Why?” She shot back, “Talk to an economist, and they can tell you specifically.”

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has projected that the federal deficit for fiscal 2023, which ends Sept. 30, will hit $2 trillion. Biden’s claims to have reduced the deficit regularly garner criticism from fact-checkers because spending remains at near-record highs and much of the reduction since 2020 came from the expiration of emergency spending rather than his own actions. The deficit increase is caused by factors such as boosted federal spending and the fact that higher interest rates — deployed to tame inflation.

“The deficit has fallen more than $1 trillion under this president, and he has signed legislation to cut the deficit by another $1 trillion — so the president’s budget would reduce the deficit by a further $2.5 trillion by cutting wasteful spending on wasteful special interests and making big corporations and the rich pay their fair share,” Jean-Pierre contended.

“By contrast, what you’re seeing from our Republican colleagues on the other side is that, you know — especially what President Trump and congressional Republicans, what they did during his administration is that they added $2 trillion to the deficit with a tax cut that obviously skewed obviously to the wealthy and large corporations.

“The president believes in moving forward with his economic plan in a fiscally responsible way, and so that’s what we’re going to continue to do here,” Jean-Pierre said. “What we know for sure is that trickle-down economy does not work, you hear us talk about all the time when we talk about Bidenomics is building an economy from the bottom up, middle out — that’s the president’s plan, that’s what he’s going to continue to do,” she said. “And that’s what he’s going to do in a fiscally responsible way.’

“What I can speak to is what the president has done over the last two years — is we the deficit go down $1 trillion. He spent — he signed another piece of legislation where the deficit is going to go down another $1 trillion. That is the president’s focus, that is why we believe Bidenomics is so important.”

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KJP refuses to explain why deficit doubling: “Talk to an economist” “From year to year volatile”