While delivering remarks on his budget at the Department of Homeland Security, the president said, “Since I took office we’ve cut the deficit by about two-thirds. I am going to repeat that, as I always do when I mention this fact, because the public often times if you ask them thinks that the deficit has shot up. Since I took office, we have cut our deficits by about two-thirds. That’s the fastest period of sustained deficit reduction since after the demobilization at the end of World War II. So we can afford to make these investments while remaining fiscally responsible….We’ve just got to be smarter about how we pay for our priorities, and that’s what my budget does.”
The president has made similar claims about reducing the deficit over the past year, and PolitiFact has rated the rated the president’s statements as true. In September 2014, the fact checker examined President Obama’s statement that he had nearly cut the deficit in half, “The numbers back up Obama’s claim: Thanks to income tax revenues rising and spending on emergency assistance dropping, America’s deficit has fallen by more than 50 percent from its highest point since World War II to a level $733 billion lower.”
The numbers have continued to improve since the FactCheck analysis. A week ago, it was announced that the budget deficit had reached its lowest point since President Obama took office.
