Topic: CNSNews.com
After years of refusing to blame Donald Trump for increasing the federal debt by $8 trillion, CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey flip-flopped and made sure to blame President Biden for the federal debt accumulated under his watch. In addition to explicitly blaming Biden for the deficits, he is implictly blaming Biden and Democrats for increased tax revenue. A Feb. 10 article by Jeffrey claimed:
The federal government collected a record $1,516,952,000,000 in total taxes through the first four months of fiscal 2022 (October through January), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.
The record $1,516,952,000,000 in federal tax collections included $824,571,000,000 in individual income taxes; $469,468,000,000 in social insurance and retirement taxes; $112,248,000,000 in corporation income taxes; $32,359,000,000 in customs duties; $25,800,000,000 in excise taxes; $8,951,000,000 in estate and gift taxes; and $43,554,000,000 in what the Treasury statement calls “miscellaneous receipts.”
At the same time that it was collecting this record $1,516,952,000,000 in taxes in the first four months of fiscal 2022, the federal government was spending $1,775,947,000,000. This resulted in a deficit of $258,995,000,000.
Jeffrey's use of the full dollar amounts violates Associated Press style on dollar amounts, which calls for using the words "million," "billion" and "trillion" instead; Jeffrey's aim here is political by making the numbers scary. While Jeffrey did not mention Biden and Democrats by name in his article, the accompanying undated file photo features Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
It was lather, rinse, repeat for the following few months. Jeffrey wrote in a March 10 article that "The federal government collected a record $1,806,838,000,000 in total taxes through the first five months of fiscal 2022 (October through February), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today." More whining about the size of the deficit, accompanied with a picture of Biden, Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris.
An April 13 article updated the numbers with the ones from March, adding that "This also marked the first time that federal tax collections have exceeded $2 trillion in the first half of a fiscal year. The photo was a different picture of Biden, Pelosi and Schumer.
Like the other articles, this one complained that a certain federal agency spent the greatest amount of that money, even more than the military did:
The Department of Health and Human Services spent $793,880,000,000 in the October-through-March period of this fiscal year, leading all federal agencies in spending. The Social Security Administration was second with $622,933,000,000. The Department of Defense-Military Programs was third with $358,398,000,000.
The next highest category of spending was interest paid on Treasury debt securities, which was $290,289,000,000 in the October-through-March period.
A May 13 article detailed spending for April, featuring a picture of Pelosi even though she is not mentioned anywhere in the story. Jeffrey reworked the numbers for May in a June 10 article:
The federal government collected a record $3,374,629,000,000 in total taxes in the first eight months of fiscal 2022 (October through May), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
Before this year, the largest October-through-May federal tax collections came in fiscal 2021, when the Treasury collected $2,833,846,070,000 in total taxes in inflation-adjusted May 2022 dollars.
[...]
The Department of Health and Human Services continued to lead all federal departments and agencies in spending through the first eight months of fiscal 2022. It spent $1,054,754,000,000. It was followed by the Social Security Administration, which spent $839,061,000,000; the Department of the Treasury, which spent $769,511,000, including $423,100,000,000 for interest on the federal debt and $346,411,000,000 on “other” expenses.
The Department of Defense-Military Programs placed fourth, spending $470,865,000,000.
This month's file photo was of Pelosi and Schumer, neither of whom are named in the article.
