The White House on Wednesday quietly deleted a tweet from the prior day boasting that Social Security payouts have risen the greatest amount in ten years under the Biden administration.
The now-scrubbed tweet read, “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership.”
Some time after the tweet went live, an “added context” disclaimer appeared on the text, noting that the increase wasn’t an intentional decision on the part of the president’s.
“Seniors will receive a large Social Security benefit increase due to the annual cost of living adjustment, which is based on the inflation rate,” the fact check on the post said.
The increases came thanks to a law President Nixon enacted in 1972 that requires automatic benefit adjustments tied to the Consumer Price Index. The CPI, a major indicator of the average cost of a consumer’s household basket of goods, has been steadily increasing as inflation has surged throughout the year.
In September, the CPI report was once again higher than expected, showing inflation at 8.2 percent year-over-year and 0.4 percent month-over-month. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced it would hike the target range for its key interest rate three quarters of a point for the fourth consecutive time to curb persistent inflation. The central bank raised the rate to 3.75-4 percent, the highest level since January 2008. For many months, the Fed has hit way above its goal of 2 percent inflation.
Elon Musk, who recently finalized his acquisition of Twitter, touted the fact check as one of a number of innovations designed to level the political playing field on the platform by verifying claims and combatting misinformation circulated by both right-leaning and left-leaning accounts.
“The community notes feature is awesome,” the tech titan said. “Our goal is to make Twitter the most accurate source of information on Earth, without regard to political affiliation.”