No other administration has so consistently or aggressively used regulation to increase direct government spending without congressional appropriations.
No other administration has so consistently or aggressively used regulation to increase direct government spending without congressional appropriations.
J oe Biden wants to be remembered as a record-breaking president. He made that clear on Monday at the Democratic National Convention, all but claiming that his unprecedented expansion of government power has brought America back from the brink. But the president never mentioned one of the most concerning records that he’s set. He isn’t just the most regulation-happy president in modern history, undermining the economy in profound ways. He has also abused rulemaking to spend more than a trillion dollars of taxpayer money without any say from Congress.
That’s the conclusion of my newest study, which found that since Biden took office, his administration has issued a nonstop deluge of what we’ll call “major regulations,” defined as those with an annual economic impact of more than $100 million. Biden’s first three years saw 196 major regulations, with dozens more released this year or forthcoming before he leaves office in January. By comparison, the Obama White House issued 176 such regulations over eight years, while the Trump administration rolled out 118 in four years.
Cost-wise, Biden’s red-tape bonanza blows his predecessors’ out of the water. In his first three years alone, he added $1.6 trillion in regulatory costs — five times more than Obama had added at the same point in his presidency and 42 times higher than Trump added in his four-year term. Biden’s last year is on track to be the most painful yet. Since January, his administration has rolled out new regulations that will double his regulatory burden.
Most of Biden’s mandates exemplify the over-regulation that’s typical of Democratic administrations — e.g., his 2024 rule on emissions standards, which builds on a similar mandate issued by Obama and has a staggering cost of at least $870 billion. But no other administration has so consistently or aggressively used regulation to increase direct government spending without congressional appropriations.
Biden’s spending-by-regulation is clearest in his massive changes to student loans, changes Congress never anticipated a president would make. He has repeatedly extended a loan-repayment pause implemented during the Covid pandemic, costing taxpayers nearly $200 billion. His subsequent efforts to cancel student debt, of which there are many, have pushed the total cost of his student-loan policies to between $870 billion and $1.4 trillion. Taxpayers would be forking over even more if the Supreme Court hadn’t struck down his earliest loan-repayment scheme.
Then there are food stamps. In 2021, the Biden administration unilaterally increased monthly food-stamp benefits, even though Congress never authorized such a move. This illegal use of executive power will cost taxpayers more than $250 billion over the next decade. Meanwhile, on Medicaid, the administration issued a mandate in April that makes it much more difficult for states to verify recipients’ eligibility. That rule is expected to increase federal spending by at least another $200 billion.
Biden isn’t the first president to use the regulatory state to shovel taxpayer money toward favored voting blocs and political causes, but his predecessors’ actions paled in comparison to his. While President Obama pursued his own student-loan-forgiveness scheme, the cost of his 2016 directive was just $150 million — a far cry from the Biden-Harris spending of hundreds of billions.
Biden’s profligacy with taxpayer money is arguably even more dangerous than his economic overregulation. Traditional regulatory mandates typically incur the bulk of their costs over time, whereas many of Biden’s spending regulations have racked up their price tag much more quickly. Student-loan cancellation is the most obvious example; it had cost taxpayers $620 billion by April of this year, and will cost them billions more before the year is out.
Biden’s regulatory spending spree has opened a door that future Democratic and Republican presidents alike are sure to walk through. Congress should shut that door altogether. Republicans obviously don’t want a President Kamala Harris to pick up where Biden left off, while Democrats surely don’t want Donald Trump to have unchecked power in a second term.
As such, both parties should push to pass the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act — or REINS Act, for short. The bill would require Congress to vote on any major regulation before it goes into effect. If Congress doesn’t rein in the presidency, taxpayer spending by executive fiat will surely get worse, undermining Congress’s most important power — the power of the purse. Here’s hoping this sordid part of Biden’s legacy spurs lawmakers to protect their own authority, to say nothing of taxpayers.