“Despite campaigning as a moderate, President Biden has dramatically accelerated federal spending during his time in office. He has now spent more in his first two years than President Trump did during his last two years at the height of the pandemic.
Official estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that, since January 2021, legislation signed by President Biden has set in motion a record $3.37 trillion in new spending, surpassing Trump’s previous record of $3.28 trillion during the 116th Congress.
Like Trump, Biden has overseen significant pandemic-related relief, but he also has ramped up spending on priorities well beyond COVID-19. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), passed in March 2021, cost $1.8 trillion, more than half of the new spending enacted during Biden’s time in office.
But it’s the other expensive legislation Biden has signed that pushed him past Trump. The much-vaunted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act spent another $765 billion, though the infrastructure expenditures will occur over the course of the next five years. The Jon Stewart-promoted Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act contributed another $278 billion, while the recently passed CHIPS Act “chipped” in $255 billion more. And though congressional Democrats failed to pass Biden’s Build Back Better legislation earlier this year, its eventual successor, the Inflation Reduction Act, is still estimated by the CBO to add another $51 billion to the federal ledger.”
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“the CBO estimated in June that a number of the president’s executive actions total another $532 billion, including interest expenses. The list of actions reviewed by the CBO include $300 billion for an expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, $34 billion for the extension of various healthcare subsidies, and $85 billion for pauses in student loan repayment.
What’s more, on the topic of student loans, Biden has since taken even greater actions. One estimate puts his most recent pause at another $40 billion, while the cost of fuller loan forgiveness would be more than $400 billion. Taken together, these add more than another $1 trillion in spending to Biden’s legislative impact, and help explain how the administration racked up a whopping $4.8 trillion in new borrowing in just the last two years.”