State of the Union: Five contentious claims from Joe Biden’s speech

Midway through Joe Biden’s second State of the Union (SOTU) address to a joint-session of Congress on Tuesday evening, the president accused Republicans of wanting to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare, prompting boos from the opposition and Marjorie Taylor Greene, for one, to cry out “Liar!” from her seat.

Under Donald Trump, the GOP often cruelly attempted to smear the 80-year-old Democrat as senile by nicknaming him “Sleepy Joe” or reacting hysterically whenever he misspoke, a tactic Lauren Boebert revived on Monday when she tweeted unkindly that new security barriers erected in DC were in place “to ensure Biden doesn’t wander off”.

Questioning his honesty appears to be the preferred new attack line, with the conspiracy-minded Ms Greene following in the footsteps of Mary Miller, who announced melodramatically on Monday that she would be boycotting the SOTU with an attention-seeking statement in which she declared that she did not wish “to listen to him lie about the damage he has caused to our country while the left-wing media and members of Congress applaud his lies”.

However, for the most part, there was little to pick holes in in Mr Biden’s uncompromising, combative address, in which he talked tough on police accountability in the wake of Tyre Nichols’ death, pledged to take a hard-line on Chinese spying and cheered on the economic recovery, citing statistics on inflation, unemployment and the national debt with which dedicated media fact-checkers could find no fault.

That said, not everything the president said deserves to pass unchallenged.

Here are five debatable claims he did make during the speech.

Medicare and Social Security

Beginning with the claim that so enraged Ms Greene and her colleagues, what Mr Biden said was: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans, want Medicare and Social Security to sunset… You know it means – if Congress doesn’t keep the programs the way they are, they would go away.”

The president was referring to the likes of Florida senator Rick Scott, whose “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” last year would require Congress to renew approval of these entitlement programs every five years, placing them in a state of near-constant jeopardy.

Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson has also previously suggested that they should be shifted to discretionary spending status that the House and Senate would have to approve annually.

Florida congressman Matt Gaetz likewise suggested to Real America’s Voice as recently as last weekend that they should be up for “reforms”, often seen as conservative code for cuts.

The idea has been rejected by both Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and new House speaker Kevin McCarthy, however, and most GOP members do not appear to agree with the position but the president only alluded to “some” Republicans so was not wrong.

National deficit

On the economy, Mr Biden declared: “In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion (£1.4trn) – the largest deficit reduction in American history.”

It is true that the US national deficit has fallen by that amount over the two years he has been in the White House and the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent estimate predicts a deficit for 2022 of around $944bn (£782bn), much less than the $2.7trn (£2.2trn) the previous year.

But the central reason for this is that the deficit had soared to record levels under his predecessor, Mr Trump, because of necessary emergency relief spending in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, after which it duly fell back as anticipated.

It is also not at all clear to what extent Mr Biden’s own actions in the Oval Office have encouraged the climbdown.

In fact, Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN in October that the opposite was true: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.”

Advocacy group the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget also calculated in September that Mr Biden’s laws and executive orders will add more than $4.8trn (£3.9trn) to deficits over the next decade.

Job creation

“I stand here tonight after we’ve created, with the help of many people in this room, 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years,” the president beamed, a claim that checks out with US Bureau of Labor statistics and for which he deserves every credit.

But not all of his claims for employment prospects were quite so concrete.

He also pledged that the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act would produce hundreds of thousands of new jobs, stating: “That’s going to come from companies that have announced more than $300bn [£249bn] in investment in American manufacturing over the next few years.”

While the investment figure is accurate, with the majority of the capital being invested in semiconductor production, the pronouncement amounts to a vague promise and it remains to be seen whether the potential of that investment will really be realised.

Similarly, another claim about the US adding “800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs” tallies with official data but how well remunerated they actually are is in the eye of the beholder.

Green energy tax credits

Discussing the Inflation Reduction Act, Mr Biden said: “Families save more than $1,000 [£829] a year with tax credits to purchase electric vehicles and… energy-efficient appliances.”

This is slightly contentious because, while the act does help American families save money on their energy bills through tax credits, these are currently only available in the case of electric vehicles (EVs) that undergo final assembly in North America, which many do not.

As it stands, 40 per cent of the critical minerals required to assemble EV engines must be extracted in the US or a country with whom it has a free trade deal before tax credits are available, a proportion that will rise to 80 per cent in 2027 and 100 per cent in 2029, at the insistence of Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

On domestic energy more generally, the nonprofit Rewiring America has calculated that households stand to save even more than Mr Biden suggested – $1,800 (£1,492) per year – if they pivot to a heat pump, switch to an EV and install solar panels on their roofs.

Global democracy

President Biden, understandably, attempted to strike an optimistic note about the state of the wider world, despite growing concerns about Russian war-mongering and Chinese authoritarianism, to name but two examples, when he said: “In the past two years, democracies have become stronger, not weaker. Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger.”

This is belied by the latest annual report from the Freedom House think-tank, for one, which is entitled: “The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule” (last year’s was called “Democracy Under Siege”, incidentally).

The report finds that no fewer than 60 countries suffered a democratic backsliding over the last year, notably Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Sudan, with only 25 making positive advances to reduce crime, improve social justice and stamp out corruption.

“Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy – a form of self-government in which human rights are recognised and every individual is entitled to equal treatment under law – are accelerating their attacks,” it states in a bleak introduction.

“Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same. In countries with long-established democracies, internal forces have exploited the shortcomings in their systems, distorting national politics to promote hatred, violence, and unbridled power. Those countries that have struggled in the space between democracy and authoritarianism, meanwhile, are increasingly tilting toward the latter.

“The global order is nearing a tipping point, and if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail. As of today, some 38 percent of the global population live in Not Free countries, the highest proportion since 1997. Only about 20 percent now live in Free countries.”