Biden contradicts himself with victory laps on deficit reduction and student loan relief

President Joe Biden took a victory lap on Friday for the biggest one-year drop in the federal deficit in American history.

That’s despite the fact that deficits remain historically high and all of the record-breaking $1.4 trillion deficit drop is driven by the fact that emergency Covid spending has lapsed.

Hours later, Biden championed his student debt forgiveness program – a program that completely wipes out the modest deficit savings created by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The dueling narratives from Biden perplexed some budget watchers who remain deeply concerned about America’s mountain of debt.

“It does strike me as contradictory,” Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN on Friday. “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.”

Maya MacGuineas – president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a deficit watchdog group – said besides the Inflation Reduction Act the Biden administration has made the fiscal situation worse, not better.

“The White House is knowingly twisting the facts to tell a very different story than a fair and accurate one,” MacGuineas told CNN on Friday.

Asked about the optics of cheering deficit reduction hours before highlighting the student debt program, MacGuineas was baffled.

“It seems a little insulting to the audience,” she said, “as though you could trick us by taking claim for fiscal responsibility – which isn’t warranted – and separate it from this huge deficit-busting executive order that is costing hundreds of billions of dollars.”