President Joe Biden’s allies have repeatedly claimed that his presidency is a historic success in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, said that Biden has “delivered the largest economic recovery plan since Roosevelt.” Similarly, presidential historian Robert S. McElvaine said that Biden’s record “stacks up well against the very high bars set by FDR and LBJ.”
The problem for Biden is that his administration has failed to actually spend much of this money.
The comparisons to FDR and LBJ center on the sheer scale of Biden’s spending. The Inflation Reduction Act alone was set to dole out $1.2 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs, $783 billion of which would be used toward the goal of reducing the Earth’s temperature through initiatives like making homes more energy efficient and replacing internal combustion vehicles with electric vehicles. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act injected another $1.2 trillion in spending.
The problem for Biden is that his administration has failed to actually spend much of this money. In May, Politico found that of the $1.1 trillion in direct investments provided through Biden’s legislative actions, a mere 17 percent had been spent. And now, with Trump’s election, much of this planned spending will never happen, as Trump has promised to revoke all unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. “To further defeat inflation, my plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam,” Trump said in September. “It actually sets us back, as opposed to moves us forward. And I will rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.”
In searching for a scapegoat for the gradual demise of their legislative achievements, Democrats would do better to blame Biden for his failure to follow through than to point fingers at Trump. While some delays stemmed from provisions requiring spending to occur in later years, for the most part, the Biden administration was simply unprepared to actually do anything with the laws Biden signed. For instance, the administration had very little use for the money passed in the infrastructure bill, with only $125 billion of its $884 billion in direct investments spent, according to the May Politico report.
The administration’s usage of the CHIPS and Science Act fared no better, with just $700 million of its $54 billion allocated, though additional funds have been tentatively awarded. Similarly, the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate change law, has seen only $60 billion in funding decisions dispersed out of the $145 billion designated for direct spending as of April.
Now, the Biden administration is in a mad dash to spend as much of the money as it possibly can. “Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants,” reported the Associated Press last week. On Friday, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg threw $3.4 billion at various projects, including $1.2 billion to produce more environmentally friendly transportation materials.
The Associated Press also cited the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent outpouring of $3 billion to replace lead pipes and the Department of Energy’s $544 million loan to SK Siltron CSS, LLC to expand silicon carbide wafers for electric vehicles. The Associated Press quoted Melinda Pierce, the legislative director of the Sierra Club, who said, “There is a new urgency to get it all done. We’re seeing explosions of money going out the door.”
Biden will ultimately be remembered as the president who cognitively lost it to such an extent that his own party ousted him from the presidential race despite his stubborn effort to cling to power. However, he will also be remembered for passing trillions upon trillions of dollars under the banner of saving the planet — only for it to be rejected by the American people and largely left unspent. History will not regard him as an FDR.
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