President Joe Biden has been talking up his deficit reduction skills lately, hoping to reframe the prevailing narrative — which is that he and his fellow Democrats have tanked the economy. Unfortunately for Biden, this latest iteration of The BIG Lie isn’t going well. Even Leftmedia “fact-checkers” are calling him on it.

Take, for instance, what he recently told a crowd in Portland, Oregon: “We didn’t increase the deficit a penny [in 2021]; we reduced it by $350 billion.”

The Congressional Budget Office does record that the deficit for fiscal 2021 was about $360 billion less than in fiscal 2020, but this had nothing to do with reduced government spending. The drop occurred because most of the COVID relief measures enacted in 2020 came to an end last year, including extended unemployment benefits, various tax rebates, and stimulus checks. And let’s not forget that many Democrats didn’t want to see those perks end. A revved-up economy (remember that brief, shining moment?) also contributed more tax revenue to government coffers, mildly offsetting the epic 2020 spending spree.

Here’s the kicker. If Biden hadn’t signed the leftist grab bag of giveaways commonly known as the American Rescue Plan into law in March 2021, the budget deficit for last year would have dropped by $1 trillion, not $350 billion.

But let’s hear more from Belt-Tightening Biden: “This year, we’re on track for $1.3 trillion in cuts,” he said in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “And look, that would be the largest debt reduction in American history.”

Again, this has nothing to do with Biden or Congress taking any steps whatsoever to reduce the deficit. It’s just more fiscal sleight of hand. Yes, deficits are projected to decline from $2.8 trillion in 2021 to $1.4 trillion in 2022, but this is because of the expiration of COVID relief packages.

While one could make the case that deficit spending technically declined for two straight years, it must also be acknowledged that deficit spending broke all prior records during the height of the pandemic. And does anyone even care that we’re now in the realm of annual multitrillion-dollar deficits? Cutting the deficit by a third of a trillion dollars is easy if you’re grossly overspending in the first place.

Biden thus has as good a grip on deficit spending as he has on inflation. Which is to say: none. And one feeds the other. The reckless spending of Team Biden is a key reason why the economy is circling the drain. Fox News’s Brit Hume may have said it best: “The deficit and the national debt are issues that worry voters, but they don’t feel it. What they feel is inflation, and they all feel it — every single voter in the country.”

People are certainly feeling inflation at a much higher rate than 8.5%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics took a look at the average price of some basic staples, and the crunch is clear to see. Ground beef is up 14.9%, eggs 25.9%, milk 17%, and fuel oil 71.5%. The list goes on.

Never fear, though: The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are at the ready with a slew of bad ideas. After pumping too much money into the economy, the Fed is attempting to put the brakes on by raising interest rates for the first time in 20 years. A necessary step, some will argue, but it has roiled the stock market, which last week spiked by 900 points then promptly lost that gain the very next day.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is proposing raising corporate and high-income individual taxes, but all this will do is suppress private-sector growth at a time when the federal government is trying to reduce its stake in the economy. Ditto the $15 minimum wage, which has already proven to be extremely damaging to small businesses that are the lifeblood of the American economy.

Biden and his fellow Democrats will do anything to duck responsibility for their crippling budget deficits and this lousy economy — anything, that is, except engage in sane spending and sound monetary policy. Biden can portray himself as a deficit hawk, and some of his lickspittles in the mainstream media will surely go along. But nothing could be further from the truth.