Topic: CNSNews.com
One of CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey's partisan schticks this year is to blame Biden for increases in the federal debt while remaining silent about how much federal debt was racked up under Donald Trump. He did this again in his Nov. 2 column:
President Joe Biden has been in office a little more than 21 months, but during that brief period he has managed to increase the federal debt by more than $3.4 trillion.
On Jan. 20, 2021, the day Biden was inaugurated, the total federal debt was $27,751,896,236,414.77, according to the Treasury.
On Oct. 31, 2022, the latest day for which the numbers have been published, the total federal debt was $31,238,301,149,359.52.
That equals an increase of $3,486,404,912,944.75.
How does one put that in perspective?
Well, in 2019, the last year for which the Internal Revenue Service has published its Statistics of Income report, Americans filed 104,005,800 "taxable returns" with the IRS.
"A taxable return,"the IRS explains in its Statistics of Income Bulletin, "is a return on which the taxpayer reports total income tax greater than zero dollars."
Thus, there were 104,005,800 income taxpayers in the United States as of 2019; and, in Biden's first approximately 21 months in office, the increase in the federal debt of $3,486,404,912,944.75 equaled approximately $33,521.25 per each of those taxpayers.
In making this attack, Jeffrey deliberately omitted perspective that undermines his argument -- specifically, that Biden came into office with a large federal deficit racked up on the previous president whose name went unmentioned by Jeffrey, Donald Trump. Trump added $7.8 trillion to the national debt during his presidency; using that rough number and dividing it by the 104,005,800 taxpayers Jeffrey cited, this means Trump's federal debt stuck taxpayers with $74,995.82 for each of them.
An article by Jeffrey detailing that fact does not exist at CNS, just as he refused to call out Trump by name during his presidency for the debt he racked up. That's partisan cowardice, information censored because it displeases his overlords and his narratives.
That's no way to engender trust in your "news" organization.
