Washington
CNN
–
President Joe Biden continues to tout the size of the increase in Social Security payments for next year.
But his boast misses critical context: Biden doesn’t explain that the reason the 2023 increase will be unusually large is that the inflation rate has been unusually large. Nor was that context included in a misleading tweet from the White House’s Twitter account on Tuesday — a tweet that the White House deleted Wednesday after it was widely criticized and Twitter fact-checked it.
Additionally, during a speech in Florida on Tuesday, Biden falsely claimed that the increase in Social Security payments in 2023 will be the first increase in 10 years. In fact, there has been an increase in every year of the Trump administration and the first two years of the Biden administration.
Biden has pointed out repeatedly in recent weeks that Social Security payments will increase significantly in 2023. He has invoked the increase while reciting his accomplishments as president.
“In our observation, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are going to get the biggest increase in their Social Security checks that they’ve received,” Biden said in a speech last week at a Democratic fundraiser.
The White House Twitter account, which has more than eight million followers, was even more direct in crediting Biden for the surge. Her now-deleted Tuesday’s tweet read: “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership.”
It is true that the 2023 increase – 8.7% – is the largest in years, in fact the largest since 1981. But this is not due to any positive achievements of Biden.
The first facts: The increase in Social Security payments in 2023 is the largest in years because the inflation rate has been the largest in years. Under a law passed in the 1970sSocial Security Payments should be increased with the same percentage that a certain amount of consumer prices has increased.
The increase is known as a cost of living adjustment, or COLA. Why will there be an 8.7% cost of living adjustment in 2023? Because average prices in the third quarter of 2022, as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), rose 8.7% from average prices in the third quarter of 2021.
Asked about the White House’s assertion that “President Biden’s leadership” is responsible for the increase, Gary Engelhardt, a Syracuse University economics professor who studies Social Security, replied, “That assertion is incorrect.”
“Social Security’s COLA is mandated by law (and has been for decades) and is tied to the rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index (ie, inflation). President Biden has no control over either. Politically, it’s a clear positive turn for a problem (inflation) weighing on his approval ratings,” Engelhardt said in an email Wednesday.
Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group, also rejected the White House’s claim.
“If inflation rises, then seniors will receive more in their Social Security checks next year to protect the purchasing power of their benefits. The fact that Biden took credit in this way sounds a lot like he’s trying to make lemonade out of inflation lemons,” Johnson said in an email Wednesday.
A second economics professor who studies retirement security, Teresa Ghilarducci of The New School, argued in an email that the White House’s tweet is “mostly true” — since Medicare Part B premiums, which are deducted from payments of people’s Social Security each month if they re-enroll in both programs will be reduced next year, giving seniors a larger “NET Social Security check” than they would otherwise receive. Ghilarducci argued that the Biden administration’s efforts to lower drug prices may have played a role in the decline in Medicare premiums.
Regardless of why Medicare premiums fell, we respectfully say that “mostly true” is far too generous. The Social Security cost-of-living increase, which has nothing to do with any of Biden’s accomplishments, will increase monthly payments by an average of $146, while the monthly reduction in the standard Medicare premium, regardless of causes, will be 5, 20 dollars.
In other words, the vast majority of the reason seniors will get more monthly money in 2023 is because of inflation, not because of any success in keeping drug prices under control.
Asked at a Wednesday briefing why the tweet was deleted, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “Look, the tweet was not complete. Usually, when we tweet, we post it with context. And it didn’t have that context.”
Biden has stressed in recent weeks that 2023 will be the first time in a decade that Social Security payments are rising at the same time Medicare premiums are falling.
Jean-Pierre identified this as “a bit of context” missing on Twitter.
In his Florida speech on Tuesday, Biden said again that people’s Medicare costs are falling in 2023 for the first time in more than a decade. That’s correct, although the drop follows a much larger increase under Biden in 2022. (That 2022 increase was caused in significant part by the need to plan to pay for a newly approved Alzheimer’s drug; because the drug maker ended up lowering the price of the drug, and because Medicare limited its coverage, Medicare can pass the savings back to Americans in 2023.)
But then Biden made a specific claim just about Social Security: “And under my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks.”
The first facts: Biden’s claim that this is the first time in 10 years that seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks is false. Inflation caused an increase in Social Security payments every year from 2017 onwards: 0.3% in 2017, 2.0% in 2018, 2.8% in 2019, 1.6% in 2020, 1.3% in 2021 and 5.9% in 2022.
The context surrounding Biden’s comment Tuesday suggests he may have missed his usual line about 2023 being the first time in a decade that Social Security payments for seniors are increasing at the same time as their Medicare payments are declining. Regardless of his intentions, however, this was a presidential speech just a week before Election Day, and he said something that was clearly wrong.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
