Not true at all.

Simplified does not at all reduce the extent to which one can express oneself in written Chinese. All it is is a reduction in the number of strokes needed for a certain number of characters. Grammar and word usage are not affected in the least.

Yeah, no, that's not true. As /u/ffatie has already stated, simplified Chinese does not reduce the extent that one can express themselves in written Chinese.

The idea behind simplified characters was to increase literacy by making certain characters easier to write (by reducing the number of strokes involved). The concepts behind the characters still exist, and, most importantly, the characters are spoken in the exact same way, whether you're using simplified or traditional. The concept of "horse" still exists between simplified and traditional, the concept of "love" still exists between simplified and traditional, etc. We say the words exactly the same way.

This is in contrast with Newspeak, as described in 1984,

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought.

[...]

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

(From Project Gutenberg, Australia, all emphasis mine.)

Newspeak is based off of strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (aka: the "ideas cannot exist or be expressed if you lack the words to express an idea" claim), which has been discredited by linguistics. However, that's a more appropriate discussion for /r/lingustics (and I'm not a linguist).