Biden Claims U.S. 'Never, Ever Failed To Pay Our Debt' — Gets Destroyed By Community Notes

President Joe Biden made an extraordinarily brash and verifiably false statement Tuesday that has sent fact-checkers scrambling, the media into apoplectic fits attempting to defend him, and conservatives into hysterical laughter.

In a post to Twitter that earned a lengthy content label, Biden wrote, "America is not a deadbeat nation. We have never, ever failed to pay our debt. But MAGA Republicans are engaged in reckless hostage-taking by threatening to force America into default. It’s dangerous and wrong." 
 

America is not a deadbeat nation.

We have never, ever failed to pay our debt. But MAGA Republicans are engaged in reckless hostage-taking by threatening to force America into default. It’s dangerous and wrong.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 3, 2023

The content label added by the Twitter community included reports from The San Francisco Examiner, The Mises Institute, The Hill, and The Globalist refuting Biden's premise. The United States, contrary to NBC reporting from January which populates as Google's answer to the question, has defaulted on the national debt several times.

Conservatively, according to Mises, the U.S. defaulted on its debt in 1779, 1782, 1790, 1837, 1862, 1933, and 1979. The Hill added defaults in 1968 and 1971. So not counting the 2013 debt ceiling crisis, that's nine?
The second portion of the post is equally nonsensical in which the 80-year-old describes, "MAGA Republicans" as being "engaged in reckless hostage-taking by threatening to force America into default." When describing the politically common maneuver that is objectively built into the U.S. Constitution of withholding government funding and subjecting it to political conditions as a policy moderation tactic. This is commonly known as the U.S. House of Representatives' 'power of the purse.'

Harvard Law School describes the 'power of the purse' as, "the power to control government spending. Often described as an essential separation-of-powers constraint on the executive branch, this power has been at the center of many recent controversies, including the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, payment of Obamacare subsidies, President Trump’s border wall funding, President Trump’s first impeachment, and President Biden’s student debt relief plan."

Furthermore, Biden himself was well known in the Senate for his utter refusal to support debt ceiling increases under Republican administrations. In 2006, then-Senator Biden of Deleware said, "My vote against the debt limit increase cannot change the fact that we have incurred this debt already, and will no doubt incur more," voting 'nay' to increase the ceiling. "It is a statement that I refuse to be associated with the policies that brought us to this point." So why would he object to Republicans taking the same stance? 

Because today it hurts him. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed this out to him in a letter in 2021, according to Newsweek. 

"You explained on the Senate floor that your 'no' votes did not mean you wanted the majority to let the country default, but rather that the President's party had to take responsibility for a policy agenda which you opposed," he wrote. "Your view then is our view now."

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