4 PINOCCHIOS! WashPost Fact-Checker Slaps Biden for ‘Fantastical’ Utility Prices Claim

Washington Post fact-checker slapped President Joe Biden with “Four Pinocchios” for making a “fantastical” claim about energy savings. 

The Post’s liberal fact-checker Glenn Kessler called out Biden for an over-the-top statement he made in a May 30 op-ed about his American Rescue Plan: “A dozen CEOs of America’s largest utility companies told me earlier this year that my plan would reduce the average family’s annual utility bills by $500,” Biden said. Kessler fired back at the president’s blatant misinformation: “He didn’t hear that from utility executives. The report Kessler is referring to isn’t about savings on household utility bills. The main source of savings is the lower cost of driving. And the estimate is for 2030 — when he would no longer be president, even if he served a second term. There is no doubt that the president has earned Four Pinocchios.?” [Emphasis added]. 

Kessler dismantled Biden’s farfetched promises on energy piece by piece: “This line caught our attention. According to EnergyStar.gov’s most recent estimates, the average American family pays $2,060 per year in utility bills. Biden has promised big savings. But it turns out the White House has been engaging in some inflation of its own.”

The president’s reference to a $500 reduction in utility bill prices for American families relied on a tangential October 2021 study by the Rhodium Group, Kessler explained. “Rhodium predicted that if Biden’s climate change policies were adopted, by 2030 ‘national average annual household energy costs’ would be ‘roughly $500 lower than under current policy.’”

The problem is, however, that 2030 still remains eight years away. Becky Quick of CNBC noted that Americans still need assistance now. In a discussion about the same Biden op-ed where the president vowed to “bring inflation down,” Quick said that the Biden administration’s so-called “plan” would not help Americans in the short term. 

“None of those steps, really, are going to address the skyrocketing costs that people have seen at the gas pump, or in line at uh, the food, grocery store, or what they’ve seen at their, in rent prices and things that have gone up,” Quick said in a recent interview with White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese.

And even worse than that, “household energy costs” are not remotely the same thing as the household utility bills that many Americans struggle to pay every month, Kessler pointed out. 

But what does the Rhodium report actually say about Biden’s climate plan?

According to the report, the Biden climate plan could potentially reduce home electricity bills by 2030. It would do so between one and five dollars more than currently. “That might pay for an extra ice cream cone over the summer,” Kessler said. 

Conservatives being attacked. Contact ABC News 818-460-7477, CBS News 212-975-3247 and NBC News 212-664-6192 and demand they report on the President’s misleading claims about energy savings.