Biden blames press for grim economy news, claims ‘surplus,’ confuses debt with deficit

WASHINGTON — President Biden criticized the media Friday over the public’s economic concerns and again mixed up the terms “debt” and “deficit” — while also claiming he’s presiding over a federal budget surplus despite actually overseeing the highest non-pandemic annual deficit in US history.

“You all are not the happiest people in the world,” Biden scolded a group of reporters at the White House.

“You turn on the television and there’s not a whole lot about ‘Boy saves dog as he swims in the lake,’” he added. “It’s about ‘Somebody pushed the dog in the lake.’ I mean, I get it.”

After that curious metaphor, Biden went on: “I think that the American people are smart as hell and know what their interests are. I think they know they are better off financially than they were before. It’s a fact. And all that data, all that polling stuff shows they think they’re more positive about the economy than they’ve been.”

The University of Michigan’s monthly consumer sentiment index has tracked a modest uptick in the public’s feelings about the economy, though the figure remains comparable to the aftermath of the Great Recession thanks in large part to stubbornly high inflation and rising interest rates.

A Marquette Law School poll out this week found that 77% of registered voters rate the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” while 23% say the economy is “excellent” or “good.”

The president was speaking about a stronger-than-expected jobs-growth report for September, which showed that the economy added 336,000 positions, increasing the chances of another round of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, which will cost consumers more on credit card bills and mortgages.

Biden described the jobs report as a positive development for people who have been able to gain employment before attempting to spin the federal balance book as improving as well.

“Those 50 corporations that made $40 billion and weren’t paying a penny in taxes? Well, guess what we made them pay 30% — 15% in taxes, 15%, nowhere near what they should pay. And guess what? We’re able to pay for everything. And we end up with an actual surplus,” Biden said.

“I was able to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over that first two and a half — two years,” Biden said at one point, confusing the terms “debt” and “deficit.”

The national debt has increased by nearly $6 trillion since Biden took office, from $27.75 trillion to about $33.48 trillion.

Former President Donald Trump’s four years in office also saw a large increase in debt, by almost $8 trillion.

The 80-year-old president claimed there was a “surplus” in an apparent reference to August budget data that portrayed spending as lower due to the Supreme Court ruling axing Biden’s attempt to forgive student loan debt, with the downward $319 billion accounting revision resulting an on-paper $89 billion surplus.

But the annual deficit for fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30, is still expected to be the worst in American history outside emergency spending during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Treasury Department data shows that the deficit for the first 11 months of fiscal 2023 was about $1.52 trillion — 61% higher than it was at the same point one year prior and already exceeding all years of federal deficit spending except for 2020 and 2021 when the federal government shouldered much of the nation’s payroll during the outbreak.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently projected that the deficit for fiscal 2023 could hit $2 trillion, up from $1.38 trillion last year.

The increase is expected due to factors including higher interest rates, which are impacting the government’s own cost of borrowing.

Interest rates have jumped as part of a drive to lower inflation, which surged during Biden’s first year in office and peaked last year at an annual rate of 9.1%.

Biden’s critics blame his large spending bills while he has blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and supply-chain issues.

Annual inflation declined to 3.7% as of August, which remains about double the Federal Reserve’s goal.

Consumer prices remain up 17% since Biden took office in January 2021.

Average credit card interest rates are now 28.06% — almost double the 14.6% average when Biden took office — and average 30-year home mortgage rates have soared from 2.65% to 7.5%.