The White House deleted a tweet on Wednesday that seemingly credited President Joe Biden for cost of living increases to seniors’ Social Security payments.
The tweet, which claimed that “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership,” was initally posted on Tuesday.
The problem is that seniors are getting 8.7 per cent increases in their payments not because of any new law or funding signed by Mr Biden, but because of annual cost of living increases that account for high inflation. A number of Twitter users pointed this out, utilising a feature on the site that allows users to fact check misleading or false claims.
Twitter ultimately did add a box under the tweet explaining that Social Security recipients recieve annual cost of living increases tied to the inflation rate. The next day, the White House took down the tweet entirely.
“The tweet was not complete,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said. “Usually when we put out a tweet, we post it with context, and it did not have that context.”
Ms Jean-Pierre said that the tweet should have included a mention of the fact that while seniors have recieved their Social Security cost-of-living increases, the cost of Medicare premiums are decreasing.
But Mr Biden himself has made this misleading claim about the reason why Social Security payments are increasing while campaigning for Democrats on the stump in the buildup to Tuesday’s midterm elections. In a speech in Miami Gardens on Tuesday, Mr Biden said, “On my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks.”
Mr Biden has focused for much of the campaign cycle on the threat Republicans pose to the future of Social Security and Medicare. In February, Sen Rick Scott of Florida, the Republicans’ Senate campaign chief, released a plan calling for the sunsetting of both programmes — meaning that Congress would have to vote to reauthorise the programmes every five years.
“They’re coming after your Social Security and Medicare, and they’re saying it out loud,” Mr Biden said at the Florida rally.
The protection of Social Security and Medicare have long been staples of the Democratic Party platform, while Republicans have often warned that the country lacks the resources to fund the programmes and proposed privitising them or raising the retirement age. Sen Mike Lee of Utah once said that he wants to end Social Security entirely.
Progressive Democrats like Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont, meanwhile, have proposed raising taxes on wealthy Americans to fund expansions of Social Security and Medicare.
