How To Lie With Statistics

On Friday, The New York Post posted an article about President Biden’s claim that he has lowered the deficit. When you examine the actual facts, the claim is false and based on a very misleading analysis of the financial data.

The article reports:

How should a president respond to running a $1.4 trillion budget deficit — 40% higher than before the pandemic — and adding trillions more to 10-year deficits?

If you are President Biden, you take a victory lap touting your “historic deficit reduction.”

In a remarkable feat of gaslighting, the president held a press conference Friday bragging about directing the “largest one-year [deficit] drop in American history.” But Biden did nothing to reduce the deficit. In fact, his policies have added a deluge of red ink.

Between 2017 and 2019, the budget deficit averaged $810 billion annually. The pandemic then put millions of people out of work and brought trillions of dollars in temporary federal benefits, pushing deficits past $3 trillion in 2020 and $2 trillion in 2021. As the pandemic receded, however, the expiration of this temporary spending was scheduled to return deficits to the pre-pandemic levels of $900 billion to $1 trillion for the next six years. Instead, Biden’s spending pushed up the 2022 deficit to $1.4 trillion — $400 billion higher than the baseline and far above pre-pandemic levels. And this was despite shattering peacetime records for tax revenues.

This is the political equivalent of the wife that comes home from a shopping trip and tells him that she saved hundreds of dollars. Well, according to the sales prices, she did save hundreds of dollars, but how much did she spend?

The article concludes:

And while Biden and Democrats brag about reducing annual deficits from Trump’s levels, they rarely mention that half of his legislative costs arose from emergency pandemic bills that were drafted and passed by congressional Democrats. It is disingenuous for Democrats to take credit for massive pandemic aid and later dismiss those costs as “Republican deficits” while also treating those costs’ scheduled expiration as courageous deficit reduction while engaging in their own spending spree.

Then again, the same White House refused to acknowledge any role in gas prices surging an extra $2.33 per gallon but demands credit when prices dip $1 from that peak.

A good statistician can make the numbers show anything he wants them to. Evidently there is a good statistician somewhere on President Biden’s staff.

I Wondered About This When He Said It

There were a lot of misleading statements in the State of the Union address on Tuesday. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about one of these statements.

The article reports:

Presidents typically embellish their achievements during their State of the Union addresses, but President Biden’s pose as a budget deficit hawk is one for the ages.

“By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half what it was before I took office,” he said, adding that he will be “the only President ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year.”

That’s not by choice.

The article notes:

This assumes Congress doesn’t enact his Build Back Better plan or the more Covid relief he’s asking for.

He’s also using the fiscal 2020 budget as his benchmark. Congress passed $2 trillion in Covid relief in March 2020 to prevent a recession. Both parties piled on $900 billion more that December, and Democrats in March 2021 ladled out nearly $2 trillion more. The deficit is declining because Congress blew it out for two years.

…Inflation is always good for government coffers. Receipts are up 28% during the first four months of this fiscal year. But the Congressional Budget Office still projects deficits to exceed $1 trillion on average over the next decade.

The article concludes:

Mr. Biden is hoping the deficit reduction ruse will lure West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to go along with more spending. Don’t fall for it, sir.

Remember, statistics can pretty much be manipulated to say anything a statistician wants them to say. President Biden evidently has some good statisticians in his speech writing department.