In less than two years since taking office, President Joe Biden has issued 99 executive orders, greatly outpacing both the Trump and Obama administrations in the same time period — at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $1.5 trillion.
Donald Trump issued 220 executive orders throughout his four-year presidency, while Barack Obama issued 276 over his eight years in the Oval Office, Fox News reported.
Most of Biden’s orders came during his first year, when he issued more than any president since the 1970s.
The budgetary impact analyses included with each order are vaguely worded and only show if the order will have no impact, increase or decrease federal costs, which makes it difficult to assign a specific dollar cost to each, Fox News noted.
But a recent Penn Wharton Budget Model shows the recent student loan forgiveness executive order alone could cost up to $1 trillion, up from the original estimated cost of $500 billion.
The Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Dickerson told Fox News that according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Biden’s earlier orders already cost taxpayers $500 billion.
“So, it could be up to $1.5 trillion in cost to taxpayers just on executive actions, not legislation going through Congress and being signed into law and being debated,” he said. “All of this new spending that the executive branch is doing, that Biden is doing, is by fiat.”
These executive orders could impact inflation.
More printed money flooding the economy, financed by the Federal Reserve, fuels inflation, Dickerson noted. The U.S. Army recently suggested that soldiers take advantage of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps.
Biden’s executive orders have expanded “the welfare state” and paid “people to stay out of the workforce,” Dickerson said. “So that’s only exacerbating the 3.3 million worker shortage that we see in the economy.”
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This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.
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