evidence: During a Thursday speech in West Columbia, South Carolina touting what he says is the success of his administration's economic policies, Biden claimed he had reduced the federal government's budget deficit by $1.7 trillion since taking office in January 2021. "And by the way, parenthetically, I want you to hear about the deficit. I cut the deficit $1.7 trillion in two years. Nobody's ever done that – cut the debt $1.7 [trillion]," Biden told the crowd gathered at manufacturing company Flex LTD. [...] In May, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed that the federal government under Biden had run a near-$1 trillion federal deficit in the "first seven months of fiscal year 2023." It found that in those months alone, the federal government had racked up $928,000,000,000.