President Obama took out one of the biggest myths about his presidency while discussing his 2016 budget. The president took aim at Republican distortions by saying, “Since I took office, we’ve cut the deficit by about two-thirds.”
While delivering remarks on his budget at the Department of Homeland Security, the president said, “Since I took office we’ve cut the deficit by about two-thirds. I am going to repeat that, as I always do when I mention this fact, because the public often times if you ask them thinks that the deficit has shot up. Since I took office, we have cut our deficits by about two-thirds. That’s the fastest period of sustained deficit reduction since after the demobilization at the end of World War II. So we can afford to make these investments while remaining fiscally responsible….We’ve just got to be smarter about how we pay for our priorities, and that’s what my budget does.”
The president has made similar claims about reducing the deficit over the past year, and PolitiFact has rated the rated the president’s statements as true. In September 2014, the fact checker examined President Obama’s statement that he had nearly cut the deficit in half, “The numbers back up Obama’s claim: Thanks to income tax revenues rising and spending on emergency assistance dropping, America’s deficit has fallen by more than 50 percent from its highest point since World War II to a level $733 billion lower.”
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The numbers have continued to improve since the FactCheck analysis. A week ago, it was announced that the budget deficit had reached its lowest point since President Obama took office.
Congressional Republicans continue to pretend like the country is mired in deficit and can’t afford to spend. The reality is that the Republican-backed cuts would do more to strangle economic growth than to launch an economic boom. Obama isn’t calling for a massive spending program. His budget is advocating a complete reversal of the sequester cuts.
For Republicans, the budget isn’t about fiscal policy and economics. To conservatives, the budget is an ideological statement. It doesn’t matter to them what the country or the economy needs. They are beholden to an ideology of dismantling the federal government. The Republicans cries of, “we can’t afford it” have everything to do with an ideological agenda that has a proven history of economic destruction.
It is good to see this president taking credit for what his occurred during his presidency. It is even more important that he pushes back every single day against Republican myths. The president gets it, and he is going to fight back against the baseless claims of his critics with the facts.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
