Most of President Joe Biden’s signature legislative packages were enacted during his first two years in office as Democrats controlled Congress.
President Joe Biden will leave office on Jan. 20 having signed numerous signature legislative agenda items into law.
Most of his legislative wins, however, were during his first two years in office, between January 2021 and January 2023, as the Democrats had control of both the Senate and House.
The following bills will be remembered as part of Biden’s presidency. The first two were passed under a mechanism called reconciliation, which allows Congress to pass legislation pertaining to taxing, spending, and the national debt in an expedited manner. Reconciliation bills aren’t subject to filibuster in the Senate, and the scope of amendments is limited, giving them an advantage.
American Rescue Plan
Biden’s first major legislation was a $1.9 trillion bill in 2021 to provide COVID-19 relief to businesses and Americans. The bill included one-time $1,400 stimulus checks to those under a certain income threshold, depending on their household status.
The bill included temporarily raising the child tax credit to $3,600 for those under 6 years old and $3,000 for those between the ages of 6 and 18. It also raised the earned-income tax credit from $543 to $1,502.
Additionally, it extended the period of emergency federal unemployment supplement checks through September of that year and increased weekly unemployment checks by $300.
Republicans criticized the bill for its price tag and said it contributed to increasing inflation.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said in a 2022 statement the bill brought “disaster consequences.”
“If President Biden won’t heed Republican warnings about the inflationary impact of his spending, perhaps he will listen to the tens of millions of Americans living under the crushing burden of the highest spike in prices in forty years,” Smith said.
Inflation Reduction Act
The 2022 bill included hundreds of billions of dollars in measures related to climate concerns, prescription drug costs, and taxes. The Biden administration has touted it as the largest climate-related investment in American green energy.
The Inflation Reduction Act was originally to be called the Build Back Better Act. It addressed Biden’s primary campaign promises such as combating climate change.
The legislation included tax credits on electric vehicles and other green energy products. It instituted a 15 percent tax on certain corporations.
It capped the cost of insulin co-pays at $35 for seniors.
Notably, no Republicans supported the bill.
The Republican-controlled Congress is expected to repeal at least parts of the law.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) blamed the legislation for being behind “high energy and medical bills, including skyrocketing Medicare part D premiums for seniors, an economy teetering on recession, and the highest national debt in our nation’s history.”
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
During his first presidency, President Donald Trump promised major infrastructure legislation. His efforts did not come to fruition until Biden took office and signed a $1.2 trillion bill to address America’s infrastructure issues.
When it came to Trump wanting infrastructure legislation, the main issue for many conservative Republicans was that its $1.5 trillion price tag was cost-prohibitive and that raising the federal gas tax was a nonstarter. By 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had caused Congress to shift its priorities toward addressing economic and other issues surrounding the virus.
Formally known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the bill allocated $365 billion to the Federal Highway Administration, $107 billion to the Federal Transit Administration, $102 billion to the Federal Railroad Administration, $25 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration, and billions of dollars more to other agencies.
Eight Republicans supported the bill in the House, while 19 Republicans voted for it in the Senate.
PACT Act
This law, which overwhelmingly passed the House and Senate and was enacted in 2022, expanded relief for military veterans who are victims of toxic chemicals and burn pits.
The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act was “perhaps the largest health care and benefit expansion” in the history of the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the agency.
The legislation runs through 2032.
Fiscal Responsibility Act
This legislation suspended the debt ceiling through January 2025, though the debt ceiling—which is the limit of how much the United States can borrow to pay its bills—is not expected to be reached for a few months. The exact timing is uncertain.
This 2023 bill was the result of negotiations between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Biden.
More Democrats than Republicans voted against the measure, which included, among numerous things, clawing back unspent COVID-19 relief funds.
Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act
Biden’s presidency will forever be linked with the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and subsequently, this 2022 measure. The bi-partisan bill reformed the Electoral Count Act, which sets the time, date, and procedures for Congress to certify the election.
Biden signed the measure—as part of an omnibus bill that included funding the government—reflecting one of his campaign themes: preserving American democracy.
The bill was passed in response to objections raised by Republican lawmakers during the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory on Jan. 6, 2021, in which pro-Trump supporters breached the Capitol, causing an hours-long delay.
The legislation to reform the certification included increasing the threshold for the number of members to object to a state’s electoral college certification—one-fifth of the members of both House and Senate—in addition to the number of senators that have to sign off on an objection. Previously, just one member of the Senate and the House needed to object in writing to individual state returns to trigger a vote on the objection.
No objections were raised during the Jan. 6, 2025, certification of President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 electoral victory.
CHIPS and Science Act
In 2022, Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, a measure meant to boost the production of microchips in the United States as part of an effort to compete with, as opposed to relying on, China, when it comes to critical semi-conductor production.
Twenty-four Republicans supported the measure in the House, while 17 Republicans voted for it in the Senate.
The White House said the law would “strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the United States the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.”
Ahead of the election, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that parts of the law would be repealed if Republicans won unified control of Washington.
“There could be legislation to further streamline and improve the primary purpose of the bill—to eliminate its costly regulations and Green New Deal requirements,” Johnson said in a statement.