DEMENTIA JOE'S IMAGINARY SAVINGS.

Dear reader, I just knocked a million dollars off my debt!

How did I do that?

Simple.  I didn't spend a million dollars on a sailing yacht!

I'm being outrageous to make a point, but it's one that Our Political Masters have trouble grasping.  "'As a matter of fact, my first two years in office I’ve lowered the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion. Lowered the deficit — the debt,' the president had said."  I suppose we should be grateful the federal government didn't buy a massive fleet of sailing yachts.

It's a common conjuring trick in Washington, compare some sort of estimate of future spending with actual spending, and claim to have been fiscally responsible.  It's also spin so egregious that Washington Post's Glen Kessler has had enough.  "Readers may recall that during Donald Trump’s presidency, we established a new category, the Bottomless Pinocchio, to account for false or misleading statements repeated so often that they became a form of propaganda."  And a lot of hypothetical yachts not bought.

Kessler noted first that the $1.7 trillion number was obtained by subtracting the deficit in fiscal year 2022 ($1.375 trillion) from the deficit in fiscal year 2020 ($3.132 trillion).

And so the deficit did drop by $1.7 trillion in two years. The problem is that the president had very little to do with this drop.

“The Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper, in February 2021 already estimated the budget deficit would fall dramatically in fiscal 2021 and 2022 because emergency pandemic spending would lapse,” Kessler wrote.

“The combined 2021 and 2022 budget deficits were projected by the CBO in 2021 to be $3.31 trillion. In November, the CBO said the combined deficits were in fact $4.15 trillion,” he added.

That's right, Dementia Joe actually borrowed more money, and added more to the national debt, than he had hoped to.

That "transformative legislation?"  Worse money after bad.

“Moreover, going forward, Biden has enacted legislation that will require the federal government to borrow even more, such as the bipartisan infrastructure bill ($370 billion in additional deficits over 10 years), health and disability benefits for veterans exposed to toxic substances ($280 billion), the CHIPS Act for semiconductor manufacturing expansion in the United States ($80 billion) and student loan debt relief and repayment pauses ($750 billion),” Kessler explained.

More money, more problems …

Kessler concluded the fact-check by awarding the president his second Bottomless Pinocchio.

“In his battle with congressional Republicans, who claim they are concerned about rising deficits, through sleight of hand, the president repeatedly has claimed he achieved historic deficit reduction because of his policies,” he wrote.

“Budget numbers often make people’s eyes glaze over and so, from a communications perspective, it’s easy to manipulate the math. But the numbers don’t lie. The president earns his second Bottomless Pinocchio,” he added.

Then the fun really begins.  The federal government borrows money to build roads and bridges that states and localities will be on the hook to repair.