White House Slammed With Cold Hard Fact Check

After attempting to claim credit for the “largest” one-year reduction in the federal budget deficit in American history on Monday, the White House received fact-checking from Twitter users.

Another Community Note that provided the context that was missing for the White House’s claim was given to President Biden’s communications team after they attempted to overstate the administration’s record on reducing the deficit on Twitter.

The Biden-Harris Administration lowered the deficit with the single largest one-year reduction in American history.

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 22, 2022

But readers added crucial information that the White House had missed, pointing out that between the fiscal years 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a sharp increase in deficit spending.

“COVID-driven deficits in both FY20 & 21 were roughly double the previous record (09), making the drop to FY22 sizable,” the Community Note said.

“But the FY22 deficit is still the 4th largest in history and is 41% larger than FY19,” Twitter users pointed out.

Community Notes, formerly known as Birdwatch, is a feature on Twitter that enables qualified users to sign up to add context to factual statements that are missing. Twitter does not run the program. Instead, users can eventually unlock the ability to write by rating the notes they find useful.

“Community Notes doesn’t work by majority rules. To identify notes that are helpful to a wide range of people, notes require agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in their past ratings. This helps prevent one-sided ratings,” Twitter explains in its Community Notes Guide.

The national debt is currently over $31.2 trillion, or 121.51% of the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S. economy (GDP).

Twitter users had previously called out the White House for making inflated claims.

Earlier this month, the White House deleted a tweet that credited Biden’s “leadership” with the “biggest increase” in Social Security payments in 10 years. Twitter users added context that said the rise in Social Security payments was “due to the annual cost of living adjustment, which is based on the inflation rate.”