It’s hard to swallow his claim that he has produced some sort of unparalleled bonanza of major legislative accomplishments.
Joe Biden is fond of claiming that he’s been some sort of FDR-style whirlwind of activity as president. In Thursday night’s press conference, he asked: “Can you name me somebody who’s gotten more major pieces of legislation passed in three and a half years?” It’s a common refrain from him.
It’s also nonsense. Biden has arguably had more legislative accomplishments than Donald Trump, or than Barack Obama’s second term. But that’s not saying much. True, presidents do a lot more than sign laws; true, it is often better to have presidents who do less, rather than more, and Biden has done a lot that would have been better left undone; true, the decline of big legislation is largely a function of Congress. But what is Biden even talking about? Biden got some of his spending proposals through Congress — not the full $6 trillion he proposed, but he did get the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a debt-ceiling deal with Kevin McCarthy, and a series of aid packages to Ukraine. Of course, Congress always passes some spending.
Biden signed a modest bipartisan “gun safety” bill, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. More consequentially, he signed the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. He signed Electoral Count Act reform, but that was buried in an omnibus spending package. Where is the big record of lawmaking through Congress? In February, Politico ran a list of “30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed.” Only five of them involved Congress; many of the others entailed the dubious habit of executive and administrative lawmaking by edict.
This is hardly Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the big Great Society legislative program. As I noted when Biden was complaining in early 2022 that he was being thwarted from doing anything by Republican obstruction, the famous “Do-Nothing” 80th Congress that Harry Truman ran against “was full of consequential activity, passing over 900 pieces of legislation including the Marshall Plan, the Taft-Hartley Act, the National Security Act (a huge restructuring of the whole military and national-security state that created the Air Force and the CIA), the Presidential Succession Act, the creation of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and the 22nd Amendment.”
Consider more recent presidents. In 2004, I ran through what George W. Bush had gotten done, both with and without Congress, in his first term; it’s a staggering list, whether or not you find much in it to like:
1. The Iraq War — While it’s true that any administration would have faced a crisis in dealing with Saddam Hussein after September 11, given the collapse of the basic assumptions of the sanctions regime and the Clinton-era commitment to a policy of regime change, there’s no denying that the Bush Administration required a massive diplomatic and political initiative to persuade reluctant allies and members of Congress, arrange basing rights and other critical military support, get UN Resolution 1441 passed, and deal with all the other logistical and political aspects of the war and its aftermath. And, of course, the war itself resulted in conquering America’s most prominent adversary in a matter of weeks and embarking on a long and arduous reconstruction of the country.
2. The Afghan War — While the Afghan war didn’t face the same political and diplomatic hurdles as the Iraq war and hasn’t involved the same complex reconstruction efforts, there were decisions to be made up front about how directly to confront the Taliban, there were those who criticized the decision to go to war (including much of the European press). The Administration’s response was to assemble what it described as “the largest coalition ever assembled.”
3. Tax Cuts — Not one or two but three rounds of tax cuts, cutting income tax rates for everyone who pays income taxes, cutting capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, estate taxes. All against such a stiff headwind of political opposition that the tax cut fight triggered a mid-term shift in control of the Senate, and at times when pundits declared that the people did not want tax cuts. Bush made the cuts his top domestic priority, and the results are apparent in the tax bills of most taxpayers.
4. Medicare Prescription Drug Bill — I don’t happen to be a big fan of this one — it seems hard to find anyone who is — but the fact remains that a prescription drug benefit was something the Clinton Administration sought and couldn’t deliver, and something both Bush and Gore campaigned on; the Bush Administration pressed hard on some Congressional Republicans to deal with the issue and even lined up the support of AARP, rare for any GOP initiative. The resulting program is one of the largest new federal programs in four decades.
5. No Child Left Behind – Again, a deeply controversial bit of legislation, and one that bequeaths a legacy of disputes over its implementation, as such programs often do. But you can’t ignore it; Bush worked with some unlikely Democratic allies (like Ted Kennedy) on the bill, and produced a substantial new set of rules and priorities for federal education policy.
6. The Patriot Act — The Administration rammed through Congress in a matter of weeks after September 11 a long and involved piece of new legislation including a long wish list of authorizations the Justice Department had been begging for for years. Law enforcement authority has been expanded in many significant ways.
7. Homeland Security — While the Administration really wasn’t the driving force behind establishing a new Department of Homeland Security, it played a very large role in shaping the legislation and, of course, has set about the daunting task of implementing it. Bush even made the contours of the Homeland Security bill a central issue in several Senate races in which he heavily invested his political capital and came away with freshly minted GOP Senators.
8. Missile Defense — Boy, we’re far down the list for something as big as missile defense, a long-time GOP priority that has moved substantially towards implementation; the Bush Administration removed the major diplomatic obstacle by withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, over fairly minimal Russian protests.
9. Partial Birth Abortion Ban — Another long-time political priority and one with major symbolic significance, as the first federal statutory restriction on abortion since Roe v. Wade. Might rank higher except that it remains to be seen if the bill survives the courts in a way that preserves any real-world impact.
10. Libya and Pakistan — The unraveling of Libya’s WMD program and the illicit arms network run by a Pakistani scientist had roots in some longstanding initiatives, but there’s little doubt that the Administration’s diplomatic efforts (including the credible threat of force, even if only implicitly) gets some credit.
11. Capture of Major Fugitives — More an operational than a policy success and part of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the apprehension of numerous Al Qaeda and Iraqi figures, as well as wanted fugitives around the globe and the interdiction of terrorist financing sources, has to be listed as an Administration accomplishment.
12. McCain-Feingold — A highly significant and longstanding legislative priority that led to a substantial overhaul of the campaign finance laws. I would rank it higher except that the Bush Administration played only a fairly minor role in actually getting the bill done. Still, Bush did manage to ensure that the hard money limits would be doubled to $2,000, the first such change since 1974, and following that compromise he did sign the bill into law.
13. Sarbanes-Oxley — An even further-reaching real-world impact can be chalked up to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which raised the criminal penalties for white collar offenses, extended the statute of limitations for securities fraud claims and imposed extensive new regulations on the way public companies operate. Like McCain-Feingold this was more something that Bush allowed to happen than made happen, but the White House’s insistence that some new legislation must be passed did play a part in getting the bill done in an election year.
14. Healthy Forests — I may be underestimating the significance of this legislation or of forest management generally as an issue, in ranking this rather low. But it is yet another area where the Bush Administration has set priorities and seen them enshrined in new legislation.
15. Steel Tariffs — Don’t ask for an endorsement here, but the tariffs did have some real-world consequences for the price of steel.
16. Faith Based Initiative — Bush’s legislation didn’t get passed, but the push to improve the government’s ability to use faith-based initiatives has nonetheless had some practical consequences in the way the government operates.
17. Clear Skies — Like the faith-based initiative, this one hasn’t seen new legislation, but the Administration has changed environmental regulations in a number of ways, including several that target specific types of emissions reductions.
Then there’s what Bill Clinton got done with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole in 1995-96, as I detailed in 2012:
-After the bruising 1995 government shutdown, Clinton and the GOP agreed to budgets that restrained spending enough to balance the budget without further tax increases. The spending cuts would leave many conservatives unimpressed, and gushing tax revenues from the boom in technology and free trade would help the budget reach balance (as would a capital gains tax cut signed in Clinton’s second term), but the point is that Republicans got at least some of what they wanted (restraining spending as a percent of GDP from over 22% in Fiscal Year 1992 to 19.6% – under 20% for the first time since the Nixon years – in Fiscal Year 1997) and didn’t have to violate pledges to resist tax hikes.
–The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 sought to reduce paperwork requirements in federal regulation, a goal that satisfied pro-market conservatives as well as Vice President Gore’s efforts at the time to streamline government operations.
–The Helms-Burton Act extended and expanded sanctions on Cuba, a conservative foreign policy priority championed by Jesse Helms.
-The Telecommunications Act of 1996 included broadcast and cable deregulatory provisions; the Act was complex and would remain controversial, but it was a significant piece of legislation that gave something to everyone.
-The Line Item Veto Act, although later struck down by the Supreme Court, was a longstanding conservative priority and part of the Contract with America. Of course, it gave Clinton something too — more presidential power.
-The Contract with America had proposed a Taking Back Our Streets Act anti-crime agenda, reflecting decades of conservative agitation for stronger law enforcement and longer prison terms. Many of its provisions ended up in subsequent enactments including the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which among other things placed new restrictions on abuses of the habeas corpus process, strengthened the federal death penalty, and imposed immigration restrictions on various types of offenders.
–The Congressional Review Act, signed by Clinton in March 1996, gave Congress greater power to reject overbearing regulations passed by administrative agencies, again a conservative priority.
-The 1996 “Taxpayer Bill of Rights 2” would offer a variety of efforts at procedural protections for targets of the IRS, always a conservative bugaboo.
-The Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996, sponsored by Bill Archer, would — among other things — expand 401(k)s for small businesses and use tax credits to promote adoption. It also included something of value to liberals (an increase in the minimum wage) that conservatives traditionally object to but are willing to treat as a bargaining chip rather than a poison pill.
-The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 accomplished a number of the goals of the failed HillaryCare health insurance proposal, but in more incremental fashion that many Republicans could swallow, such as protecting continuing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions who already have health insurance and then change jobs to an employer with a different plan.
–Welfare reform in the form of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, a conservative priority ever since Ronald Reagan’s reforms to California’s welfare system in the early 1970s and a cornerstone of the Contract with America, was passed and signed by Clinton in late August 1996 (during the week between the Republican and Democratic conventions) following a drawn-out battle that had featured two Clinton vetos. It remains the only major example of a federal entitlement program undergoing significant reform.
-The Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban, a/k/a the Lautenberg Amendment, incorporated a variety of provisions designed to prevent people convicted of crimes of domestic violence from owning guns. Broad-ranging gun control was out of the question for a GOP Congress elected with major NRA support in revolt over the “assault weapons ban,” but a bill narrowly targeted at a class of criminals was able to attract enough Republican support to pass.
-The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996 limited liability for charitable donors of food. A small bill, but one that combined two Republican passions: tort reform and private charity.
-The Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by Clinton on September 21, 1996 with overwhelming bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress, gave states protection against being compelled to accept out-of-state same-sex marriages in other states; “Section 3 of DOMA codifies the non-recognition of same-sex marriages for all federal purposes, including insurance benefits for government employees, Social Security survivors’ benefits, and the filing of joint tax returns.” DOMA was and is, obviously, a social conservative priority.
-The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, signed by Clinton on September 30, 1996, imposed a variety of measures to tighten enforcement of the immigration laws, mainly by strengthening deportation provisions and expanding the ability to deport those convicted of crimes and keep out of the country those already deported. IIRIRA may not have satisfied border hawks, but like a number of Clinton-era initiatives it built bridges between moderates in both parties by targeting a narrow class of criminals.
–“The Regulatory Accounting Act, passed in the final weeks of the 104th Congress, requires the executive branch to produce an annual report for Congress estimating the total benefits and costs of all federal regulations.” This, too, was a longstanding conservative reform proposal. Also passing at the end was the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, a Kit Bond-backed bill to ease regulatory burdens on small business, a perennial Republican priority.
Another Contract with America promise, the $500 per child tax credit, would be signed into law by Clinton in 1997.
Whatever else can be said for or against Biden’s record, it’s hard to swallow his claim that he has produced some sort of unparalleled bonanza of major legislative accomplishments.