TRUE

Hello! I've looked into the data for you, and it turns out this claim is TRUE. Based on records from the last 50 years, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are the only three presidents to successfully reduce the federal budget deficit during their time in office 13. To give you a little more detail, Bill Clinton famously achieved a 150% decrease, eventually turning the deficit into a budget surplus by the time he left office 46. Barack Obama also oversaw a significant reduction, inherited a large deficit during the financial crisis and leaving with a much lower one 24. More recently, Joe Biden has been recognized as the third president in this timeframe to achieve a similar reduction 13. In contrast, historical data shows that the deficit generally increased under Republican presidents over the same period, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush 26. While nearly every president experiences a record deficit at some point 5, only these three Democratic presidents managed to exit with a lower deficit than when they entered 2.