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President Joe Biden has gotten a rare rebuke from a mainstream media outlet over a claim he made about a newly signed piece of legislation.
During a White House signing ceremony earlier this month for the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, legislation that will provide subsidies to bolster domestic manufacturing of computer chips and similar technology amid rising tensions with China, Biden’s claim about the number of jobs the bill would create earned him “four Pinocchios” in a Washington Post fact check on Thursday.
Biden bragged that the legislation will create 1 million new construction jobs over the next half-dozen years.
“There’s an analysis that says investment in the Chips and Science Act will create 1 million — more than 1 million construction jobs alone over the next six years building semiconductor factories in America,” Biden claimed.
The president made the same claim on Twitter just a couple of days later.
“Investments in the CHIPS and Science Law will create more than 1 million construction jobs alone over the next 6 years building semiconductor factories in America,” his Twitter account said.
Investments in the CHIPS and Science Law will create more than 1 million construction jobs alone over the next 6 years building semiconductor factories in America.
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 11, 2022
But fact-checkers said that the real number of construction jobs likely to be created by expanding chip factories in the U.S. is around 6,200.
“We’ve learned from experience that when a president utters a big job-creation number, it’s ripe for fact-checking,” fact-checker Glen Kessler wrote in The Washington Post. “So we were curious to learn how the president’s job prediction for the Chips and Science Act — which will provide nearly $53 billion for U.S. semiconductor research, development, manufacturing and workforce development — was developed.”
Kessler noted that Biden “mentioned an ‘analysis’ as the source for the claim that 1 million construction jobs would be created. … But we were puzzled when we did not see the figure in the White House’s ‘fact sheet’ on the bill.”
“It turns out this number is wildly exaggerated,” Kessler added, noting that his “first tip-off” that the number may be false was the sheer size.
“The second tip-off is that Biden was specific — 1 million construction jobs in six years. Before the pandemic tanked jobs, the U.S. economy took four years to add 1 million construction jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data — from all industries, not just the semiconductor business,” he explained.
The White House pointed Kessler’s fact-check team to a 2021 report from the Semiconductor Industry Association when asked to provide a basis for Biden’s claim.
“That report touted the contribution of the semiconductor industry and examined the potential impact of a $50 billion federal investment program, similar to the Chips Act,” Kessler wrote.
The Western Journal adds:
That gave the fact-checkers their third tip-off. The report had been “issued by an industry advocate,” Kessler noted, a group that is interested in putting “the best gloss on the industry’s economic contributions.”
Even SIA spokeswoman Sarah Ravi was forced to admit that Biden’s “statement about 1 million construction jobs is not accurate.”
“[T]he president stumbled badly here,” Kessler wrote. “In public remarks, and then in a tweet, he claimed 1 million construction jobs would be created because of the Chips Act. The real number was just 6,200, according to the industry-commissioned report cited as the source.
“If you wanted to be generous, you could say the report said 56,000 jobs would be supported by construction. If you wanted to be very generous, you could say 1 million jobs would be supported in the ‘construction phase’ of the law. But that would be overly generous, given that the White House amplified Biden’s statement in a tweet; it was not a simple misspeak,” he added.
“[T]here is no reason to get the number so wrong — twice. While the White House concedes a ‘mix-up,’ the tweet has not been deleted; neither has the official transcript been corrected. The president earns Four Pinocchios,” Kessler wrote in conclusion.
Earlier in the month, Biden was blasted for claiming that the country experienced “zero” inflation after the Labor Department announced that the July inflation rate was 8.5 percent, following 9.1 percent inflation in June.
