Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, cited favorable job numbers that have been deemed "misleading," Fox Business News reported. Young made the mistake of repeating a false claim that President Joe Biden reduced unemployment to a 50-year low and added 15 million jobs to the economy.
Young made the claim during a budget hearing on Thursday after Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) asked whether Biden could "understand the impact" of his economic policies, including the proposed $7.3 trillion budget. "I get why people don’t want to give the president credit for 15 million jobs added, for unemployment being at a 50-year historic low," Young replied.
"I get the grandstanding. But if you want to do something about the border ... there was a bill right in front of Congress," she later added. "But we choose to come in rooms like this to talk about the budget in question," Young said.
WH Budget Dir. Shalanda Young: “I get why people don’t want to give the president credit for 15M jobs added, for unemployment being at a 50-year historic low…I get the grandstanding. But if you want to do something about the border...there was a bill right in front of Congress.” pic.twitter.com/3ZXl7yoaPJ
— The Recount (@therecount) March 21, 2024
Young repeated this claim as Biden seeks a $7.3 trillion budget agenda. However, the figures she put forth have been disputed and found wanting, even by left-leaning Snopes.
A report on the fact-checking website deemed the claim a "mixture" of fact and fiction in a post on Thursday. What's true is that the economy indeed added "14.9 million jobs in total," the website said.
However, Snopes also pointed out that using the number instead of the net jobs was "misleading" because they were added after the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 20 million jobs. To call the recovery of nearly 15 million jobs a success is patently false.
The Washington Post similarly found Biden's use of the same figure during the State of the Union address deceitful for the same reason. It went on to assert that much can happen during the last year of Biden's term just as the pandemic did for former President Donald Trump.
Finally, Factcheck.org similarly dismissed the claim based on the net totality of the number that simply doesn't add up. Still, Young recycled this debunked claim because Biden had no success on which to stake his campaign.
Many people are suffering under Biden's economy despite the administration and the media working in tandem to spin it otherwise. Even the New York Times ran a piece giving voice to the people who voted for Biden in 2020 but are now unhappy when it comes to the economy.
Biden's younger voters are especially hit hard by inflation and other economic woes, and it shows. Eighty-nine percent of voters 18 to 29 years old believe Biden's economy is "poor" or "only fair."
"I think the likelihood that they would choose Trump is not the threat. The threat is that they would choose the couch and stay home, and enough of them would stay home for an electoral college win for Trump," Joshua Doss, HIT Strategies analyst, said.
The lie about the job numbers must be repeated because the truth about what he's done to the nation is abysmal. Voters can be fooled about many things, but not when it comes to how much money is in their pockets.
