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.