evidence: In another part of the speech, Biden said, "We cut the debt by $1.7 billion the last two years." The White House made a correction to the official transcript to make it "$1.7 trillion" instead of "$1.7 billion." Facts First: This claim is inaccurate even if you ignore Biden’s billion-versus-trillion mixup. The national debt has continued to increase under Biden. It is the deficit that has declined by about $1.7 trillion – and experts say it is misleading for Biden to take credit for that reduction. [...] The deficit did fall by roughly $1.7 trillion between fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2022, from about $3.1 trillion to about $1.4 trillion. But as CNN has repeatedly noted, it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for the decline – which overwhelmingly occurred because the emergency pandemic spending from the end of the Trump era expired as planned. In fact, independent analysts say Biden’s own new laws and executive actions have significantly added to current and projected future deficits, not reduced those deficits. You can read more here and here.