President Joe Biden launched his reelection marketing campaign early Tuesday with a factually challenged video that focuses closely on accusations towards Republicans.
The three-minute video with Biden’s voice-over opens with scenes of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, then shifts to a pro-abortion protester in entrance of the Supreme Court docket holding an indication saying “abortion is well being care.” The advert prominently options photographs of Vice President Kamala Harris and first woman Jill Biden.
Listed here are 4 factually challenged claims made by Biden within the announcement of his reelection bid.
1. ‘Slicing Social Safety’
“Across the nation,” Biden says within the advert, “MAGA extremists are lining as much as tackle these bedrock freedoms, reducing Social Safety that you just paid in your whole life whereas reducing taxes for the very rich.”
Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., repeatedly has mentioned that Social Safety and Medicare are “off the desk” in lawmakers’ price range and debt-ceiling negotiations.
“Within the coming weeks, the Home will vote on a invoice to carry the debt ceiling into the subsequent 12 months, save taxpayers trillions of {dollars}, make us much less dependent upon China, curb our excessive inflation—all with out touching Social Safety and Medicare,” McCarthy mentioned final week. “Merely put, it places us on a fiscally accountable path in 3 ways: It limits, it saves, and it grows.”
Beforehand, McCarthy had mentioned that “cuts to Medicare and Social Safety, they’re off the desk.”
Biden made the same declare Feb. 7 throughout his State of the Union deal with, and was fact-checked in actual time by members of Congress who booed or shouted, “Liar.”
One of the best proof that Biden appears to have for the declare is that earlier than the 2022 midterm elections, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., launched an 11-point plan that, amongst different issues, referred to as for Congress to vote to reauthorize all federal applications, versus permitting all applications to resume routinely.
Scott argued that “if a legislation is value conserving, Congress can cross it once more.”
The Florida Republican’s proposal didn’t single out Social Safety, but additionally didn’t embrace a caveat for Social Safety or every other budgetary merchandise.
Nevertheless, Republicans didn’t undertake the Scott plan—with at finest imprecise references to Social Safety— as an official marketing campaign doc.
2. ‘Stand Up for the Proper to Vote’
At a number of factors within the advert asserting his reelection marketing campaign, Biden references the suitable to vote being underneath assault.
“That’s been the work of my first time period, to combat for our democracy,” Biden says early within the advert.
Biden goes on to say that “MAGA extremists” wish to take away quite a few freedoms and rights, “all whereas making it harder for you to have the ability to vote.”
Towards the tip of the video, Biden says he’ll “get up for the suitable to vote and our civil rights.”
The president doesn’t specify who or what would take away anybody’s proper to vote. However prior to now, he has been extremely crucial of state election reforms reminiscent of increasing voter ID necessities and upkeep of voter lists in addition to restrictions on the controversial apply of poll harvesting.
The midterm elections of 2022 broadly present that new election reforms throughout the nation had no unfavourable influence on voter turnout.
A report earlier this month by Hans von Spakovsky, supervisor of the Election Regulation Reform Initiative at The Heritage Basis, checked out 2022 turnout in Georgia, Texas, and Florida, the three states most focused by the Left over their election reforms in 2021. (The Every day Sign is Heritage’s multimedia information group.)
In comparison with earlier midterm elections, turnout was 5% larger in Georgia in 2022 than in 2018, and a pair of% larger in Texas.
Turnout dropped 2% from 2018 to 2022 in Florida, in response to knowledge from the U.S. Elections Undertaking. Nonetheless, Florida had the 18th highest turnout within the nation, down from sixteenth in 2018.
Nationwide voter turnout averaged 46.6% in 2022, whereas in Florida it was 49.4%.
Of the states that handed election reforms in 2021, Georgia was maybe essentially the most maligned. Biden and different Democrats claimed the modifications have been for “voter suppression.” Biden labeled Georgia’s election reforms as “Jim Crow 2.0” and “Jim Eagle.”
Nevertheless, the University of Georgia’s Survey Research Center poll of voters in 2022 discovered that 72.6% of black Georgians mentioned their expertise was “glorious” and 23.6% mentioned it was “good,” whereas 0% reported a “poor” expertise voting.
An identical share of white Georgia voters, 72.7%, referred to as their 2022 voting expertise as “glorious.”
The college’s survey additionally discovered that 19.1% of black Georgia voters mentioned voting was “simpler” in 2022 than in 2020, whereas 72.5% mentioned there was “no distinction.” Amongst white voters, 13.3% mentioned they thought it was “simpler” to vote, and 80.1% discovered “no distinction.”
Biden beforehand referred to as Texas’ election reforms “mistaken and un-American” and an “assault on democracy.” Nevertheless, Texas noticed internet enhancements in voter participation, von Spakovsky wrote within the Heritage report:
In 2018, earlier than these newest reforms have been in place, the VEP [voting eligible population] turnout in Texas, in response to the U.S. Elections Undertaking, was 45.6%, or 4.4 share factors beneath the nationwide turnout price. In 2022, the VEP turnout in Texas was 42.5%, a lower of three.1 share factors, which was smaller than the nationwide lower of three.4 share factors.
Texas, with its new provisions in place, went from being ranked forty second within the nation by way of VEP turnout in 2018 to being ranked fortieth in 2022. Texas thus barely improved its turnout relative to different states.
3. ‘Banning Books’
Within the advert, Biden says Republicans are “dictating what well being care choices ladies could make, banning books, and telling individuals who they will love,” however doesn’t present any specifics.
Biden apparently was referencing Republicans’ assist for pro-life insurance policies and alluding to opposition by some Republicans to same-sex marriage.
What’s extra of a stretch is the accusation that Republicans wish to ban books.
It’s not clear how Biden defines e-book bans.
What isn’t occurring is the frequent definition of a “ban,” which is both prior restraint of publication or proscribing all availability of books.
What has occurred is that officers, responding to oldsters’ protests, have eliminated some books with grownup content material from college libraries.
A lot of the Left’s goal has been directed at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who signed a invoice to stop pornography in class libraries. After a lot media criticism for supposedly “banning” books, DeSantis confirmed a few of the express materials within the books aimed toward kids.
The identical media retailers that criticized the governor for eradicating the books cut the feed of the press convention. This motion indicated that the content material was too express for the information retailers’ viewers.
The American Library Affiliation and PEN America, an advocacy group for literary authors, have issued quite a few allegations of e-book banning whereas utilizing unfastened standards.
The American Library Affiliation defines banned books as together with any works which might be “challenged” by dad and mom, directors, or public officers.
PEN America defines a ban as making a e-book inaccessible in class libraries or classroom curriculums. The group has claimed that greater than 1,600 titles have been faraway from college libraries through the 2021-22 college 12 months.
Nevertheless, an examination reveals that a lot of the titles recognized as “banned” by PEN really haven’t been faraway from college libraries, in response to Jay Greene, a senior analysis fellow within the Middle for Schooling Coverage at The Heritage Basis, and Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow on the American Enterprise Institute.
4. ‘Freedom Is Basic’
In his video, Biden says a number of instances that he would defend freedom.
“Private freedom is prime to who we’re as Individuals,” Biden says. He later provides: “Across the nation, MAGA extremists are lining as much as tackle these bedrock freedoms.”
“Get up for our private freedom,” the president says within the advert.
“The query we face is within the years forward, will we’ve extra freedom or much less freedom, extra rights or fewer rights? I do know what I need the reply to be, and I believe you do too,” he says.
Biden’s references to preserving freedom are imprecise.
Nevertheless, throughout over two years in workplace, Biden has boosted regulation in contrast together with his fast predecessor, Donald Trump.
In its first two years, the Biden administration imposed 517 regulatory actions at an financial price of $318 billion, The Wall Avenue Journal reported.
That’s fewer guidelines than the final Democrat president, Barack Obama, but it surely comes at a larger financial price.
The Obama administration imposed 740 laws within the first two years at a price of $208 billion to the financial system.
The Trump administration, recognized for deregulation, imposed 1,340 guidelines at a price of $64.7 billion over 4 years.
The Journal refers to work by Clyde Wayne Crews, senior fellow in regulatory affairs on the Aggressive Enterprise Institute, a free-market suppose tank.
The regulatory burden imposed by the federal government prices $2 trillion, or 8% of the financial system, in response to Crews, who estimates this prices $14,684 a 12 months to the common American family. Unelected bureaucrats at federal businesses subject 13 guidelines for each one legislation handed by Congress, he says.
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