The Staggering Cost of Biden’s Executive Overreach

It’s no secret that Joe Biden’s out-of-control (and oftentimes illegal) spending has dealt a severe blow to Americans’ wallets. But according to an analysis from the House Budget Committee, the total cost of Biden’s executive overreach, both in terms of direct withdraws from the Treasury and downstream effects on the U.S. economy, may be even higher than previously thought – an eye-watering $2.043 trillion.

The committee’s breakdown of Biden’s flood of executive actions reveals a pattern of egregious spending aimed at helping Biden’s political allies and advancing far-left policy priorities.

For instance, Biden’s student loan repayment “pause,” which he extended six times even after himself declaring the pandemic was over, will cost taxpayers $165 billion. His latest plan to cancel student debt (read: transfer the debt to everyone but the people who took out the loans), which the Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis says “about 750,000 households making over $312,000 in average household income” would be eligible for, came with a price tag of $150 billion. Another loan forgiveness scheme would cost an additional $350 billion.

Biden also unilaterally forced more than 600,000 Americans already on employer healthcare to go on Obamacare, a move that appears blatantly illegal. That cost taxpayers $34 billion more.

Another Biden executive overreach, a rule requiring federal contractors to begin paying their employees a minimum of $15 per hour which went into effect in 2022, has already cost the American economy an estimated $3 billion. With 19 million people on the payrolls of government contractors, this policy will keep costing Americans indefinitely.

Just one of Biden’s regulatory actions, the Environmental Protection Agency’s tailpipe vehicle emissions rule, is expected to cost the U.S. economy roughly $870 billion. That nearly matches the $890 billion total price tag of Obama’s regulations throughout his entire eight-year presidency.

As House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington noted in a statement following release of the analysis, the price of Biden’s presidency for the American people is “45 times the regulatory costs accumulated under President Trump and almost five times the regulatory costs added under President Obama.”

Moreover, the American people have incurred all of this cost without a single vote on Capitol Hill, seeming to violate the Constitution’s provision that Congress should have the “power of the purse.”

According to another report published last July by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a budget watchdog group, Biden’s regulations had already cost every American household about $10,000 on average – a figure that is undoubtedly even higher now. As The New York Post reported at the time, “should Biden’s regulatory trajectory keep pace with that of his former boss, Barack Obama, the cost will skyrocket to roughly $60,000 per household by the end of Biden’s possible second term in office.”

By comparison, the same study found Trump’s program of targeted deregulation led to roughly $11,000 in savings per household – a more than $20,000 swing from the current situation under Biden. Another four years of Trump would’ve saved households another $10,000.

That contrast could be a major factor in the rematch between Trump and Biden this November, particularly as inflation and a cost-of-living crisis continue to plague the country. The inflation rate was 3.4 percent in April, below the 40-year-highs seen earlier in Biden’s presidency but still well above the norm.

Overall, prices are up nearly 20 percent since Biden took office as measured by the Consumer Price Index, a point that former President Donald Trump has hammered during his recent campaign stops. “It’s like a sales tax, but much bigger, more painful, and more destructive, because all of the money goes to pay for Joe Biden’s wasteful inflation spending like the Green New Scam,” Trump said of the increased costs under Biden.

“Not one thing is cheaper under Crooked Joe. Food, gas, cars, trucks, rent and mortgages, they’re all through the roof,” Trump continued. “The whole country is going to hell because of this guy… it’s a massive wealth confiscation from the people who need it most.”

At the same time, the national debt has continued to balloon, crossing $34 trillion earlier this year and on pace to add another $1 trillion every 100 days. This week, interest payments on the national debt surpassed total spending on defense and Medicare, topping $514 billion so far this fiscal year and set to go even higher in the months ahead.

The U.S. federal debt-to-GDP ratio has also reached a new high of 122 percent. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, once that figure reaches 200 percent, “no amount of future tax increases or spending cuts” could prevent the government from defaulting on the debt, leading to “catastrophic repercussions in the United States and in markets across the globe.”

Any way you look at it, Biden’s presidency is costing Americans big, both in terms of their current financial situation and the country’s economic future.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.