{"id":1371993,"date":"2022-03-11T18:26:37","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T23:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1371993"},"modified":"2022-03-11T18:26:41","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T23:26:41","slug":"fact-check-joe-biden-claims-he-could-not-afford-child-care-as-a-u-s-senator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fact-check-joe-biden-claims-he-could-not-afford-child-care-as-a-u-s-senator\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact Check: Joe Biden Claims He Could Not Afford Child Care as a U.S. Senator"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffact-check-joe-biden-claims-he-could-not-afford-child-care-as-a-u-s-senator%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1371993&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed that he \u201ccould not afford child care \u2026 as a United States Senator\u201d in 1973.<\/p>\n<p>VERDICT: PROBABLY FALSE. Biden was a high earner and his sister, Valerie, moved in to take care of his two sons.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>Biden told House Democrats Friday at their annual retreat that after his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident shortly after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he commuted daily between Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington, DC, because he could not afford the cost of child care.<\/p>\n<p>He made that point as a way of arguing for his proposal to cap child care expenses at 7% of income for individuals making less than $100,000, or families earning less than $120,000 annually.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI did over 2 million some miles on Amtrak. But here\u2019s the deal: I did it because I could not afford child care. I couldn\u2019t even begin to think of it. And I was making, I was making at that time, as a United States Senator, I was making more money than I made before. I couldn\u2019t afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Biden\u2019s claim is probably false, as his Senate salary placed him among the country\u2019s elite earners. Moreover, he wrote in his biography,\u00a0<em>Promises to Keep<\/em>, that his sister, Valerie, moved in with him to help take care of his sons.<\/p>\n<p>Biden has made this claim before. He did so, for example, in a Democratic Party presidential primary debate in Iowa in January 2020.\u00a0The Washington Free Beacon <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/politics\/biden-says-he-couldnt-afford-childcare-making-42k-in-1973-or-250k-adjusted-for-inflation\/\">noted<\/a> at the time:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI was a single parent, too,\u201d Biden said when asked about universal childcare. \u201cWhen my wife and daughter were killed, my two boys I had to raise. I was a senator, a young senator, I just hadn\u2019t been sworn in yet. And I was making $42,000 a year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI commuted every single solitary day to Wilmington, Delaware \u2026 250 miles a day,\u201d the former vice president continued. \u201cBecause I could not afford, but for my family, childcare. It was beyond my reach to be able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While living on $42,000 would place Biden in the bottom half of U.S. households in today\u2019s dollars, it placed him firmly among the richest Americans when he was sworn in as senator in 1973. Biden\u2019s freshman Senate salary of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.senate.gov\/artandhistory\/history\/common\/briefing\/senate_salaries.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$42,500<\/a>\u00a0would be the equivalent of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/data.bls.gov\/cgi-bin\/cpicalc.pl?cost1=42%2C500.00&#038;year1=197301&#038;year2=201912\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$256,370.77<\/a>\u00a0in 2019 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/meredithk27\/status\/1156749744309440513\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1981 op-ed<\/a> for the\u00a0Salisbury, Md, newspaper\u00a0the\u00a0<em>Daily Times\u00a0<\/em>titled \u201cCongress is supporting deterioration of family,\u201d Biden even argued that families in his income bracket were precisely the sort who did not need the federal government\u2019s help providing for their childcare.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Biden made the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gulte.com\/trends\/127398\/couldnt-afford-child-care-biden-recalls-his-struggle-of-single-parenthood\">claim<\/a> again last year:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>During a speech in Connecticut, Biden said his past and how he \u201ccould not afford the child care\u201d on a senator\u2019s salary, forcing him to commute daily between Washington and Delaware. \u201cIt made me realize how difficult it is for the vast majority of people who need help,\u201d Biden said at the child care centre in the state capital Hartford.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The actual cost of child care at the time, according to a Senate study published in October 1974, was between $1,245 and $2,320. It is hard to understand how Biden would have been unable to afford that; it was, at most, 5.5% of his income.<\/p>\n<p>In his <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/Promises_to_Keep.html?id=3SqRQnn4IykC\">biography<\/a>, Biden does not mention the cost of health care for his surviving children, Beau and Hunter. Instead, he notes that his sister, moved in with his sons. He did, in fact, commute daily between Wilmington and Washington \u2014 for the understandable reason that he wanted to reassure them, after the loss of their mother, that he was coming home at night.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, he mentioned in his biography that he was \u201cdoing just fine\u201d maintaining his household on his Senate salary (94).<\/p>\n<p>So while it is theoretically possible that Biden is telling the truth, it is highly unlikely that he is doing so. Instead, he is exploiting and exaggerating a personal tragedy for political purposes \u2014 something he has developed a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2019\/oct\/18\/joe-bidens-false-claim-about-drunken-driver-draws-\/\">habit<\/a> of doing.<\/p>\n<p><em>Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of <\/em>Breitbart News Sunday<em> on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Neither-Free-nor-Fair-Presidential-ebook\/dp\/B08PNN54BB\">Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election<\/a>. His recent book, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.centerstreet.com\/titles\/joel-b-pollak\/red-november\/9781546099840\/\">RED NOVEMBER<\/a><em>, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at <a class=\"x5l\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joelpollak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">@joelpollak<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed that he \u201ccould not afford child care \u2026 as a United States Senator\u201d in 1973. VERDICT: PROBABLY FALSE. Biden was a high earner and his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1371993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}