Fact-checking Biden’s State of the Union address
Facing a challenging path to reelection amid low favorability ratings and public wariness over the economy, President Joe Biden used his 2024 State of the Union address to take a fighting posture. He repeatedly drew contrasts with his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, and occasionally sparred with GOP lawmakers in the audience.
“This is a moment to speak the truth, to bury lies,” Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who believed falsehoods that the 2020 election had been stolen. “Here's the simple truth: You can't love your country only when you win.”
Biden didn't say Trump's name in his remarks, but he frequently invoked Trump, usually referring to him as “my predecessor.”
Some Republicans called out Biden from the floor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., challenged Biden over the killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. An immigrant in the U.S. illegally has been charged in Riley's death.
Another GOP lawmaker, Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden, yelled, “Lies!” in response to Biden's criticism of Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are some key statements that PolitiFact fact-checked on immigration and the economy:
Biden blamed Republicans for sidelining Senate border security bill
For years, Republicans have blamed Biden for the historically high illegal immigration under his watch. Some Republicans wore red and white pins that said “Stop the Biden border crisis” in large capital letters.
Biden said it was Republicans' turn to act and cooperate with him and Democrats on a border security bill. He blamed Republicans for sidelining a Senate immigration bill, which failed in a 49-50 vote, that he claimed was “the toughest set of border security reforms we've ever seen.”
Here's some context missing from some of Biden's comments on the bill.
“It would also give me and any new president new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming.”
This needs context.
The proposal sought to enable the executive branch to block people from seeking asylum in between ports of entry if illegal immigration encounters reached certain levels.
It aimed to change what happened when people reached the border, but that doesn't mean people would stop showing up. Despite the emergency authority, the government's ability to quickly remove people from the U.S. would still hinge on its resources, and other countries' willingness to take back immigrants.
“In short, there is no authority that Congress could pass that would allow for a ‘complete and total shutdown of the border,'” Theresa Cardinal Brown, the Bipartisan Policy Center's senior adviser for Immigration and border policy, previously told PolitiFact. “That's just not how borders work in any real sense. Especially not our border with Mexico.”
The bill called for “4,300 more asylum officers and new policies so they can resolve cases in six months instead of six years now.”
On average, asylum cases in immigration court take more than four years to be resolved, according to a 2023 report published by the American Immigration Council, an immigrants' rights advocacy group. But the growing case backlog could increase that average.
Biden took a victory lap on the reduced inflation rate and other economic metrics. But a few of his talking points, including on “soaring” consumer confidence and cuts to the deficit, were exaggerated.
“Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% — the lowest in the world!”
The U.S. is doing better on managing inflation than most advanced industrialized nations are, but it does not rank No. 1 internationally.
Biden is correct that the year-overyear inflation rate has dropped from 9%, a four-decade high, in summer 2022 to a little above 3% now amid sharp interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
In December 2023, seven countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — Canada, Denmark,
Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and South Korea — had inflation rates lower than the U.S'.
“Consumer studies show consumer confidence is soaring.”
It depends on the measure.
Two long-running consumer confidence measures are released by the University of Michigan and the Conference Board, a business membership and research organization.
Consumer confidence, as measured by the University of Michigan survey, has climbed sharply since bottoming out in the summer of 2022, when inflation hit 9%. However, the rating under Biden remains lower than it was for four of the past five presidents at the same point in their tenures.
The labor market has been a strength for Biden during his watch. And the Conference Board survey shows that consumer sentiment is now higher than it was under three of the previous four presidents at this point in their tenures.
“I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over a trillion dollars.”
This merits asterisks. The deficit — the difference between federal spending and federal revenues — fell by $1.4 trillion between 2021, Biden's first year in office, and 2022, his second year. That was a larger decline than in any previous one-year span.
However, this reduction stems largely from the phasing-out of pandemic-era relief programs. Also, even at its reduced levels, the deficit remains higher under Biden than it was pre-pandemic.