Love or hate Executive Orders — (or if you only like them when it’s your guy who’s signing them) — you have to admit President Biden has already proven to be good at them.
But how does he stack up against other fairly recent Presidents in terms of numbers?
He’s not even close to top.
That spot belongs to Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) who signed 3,721 executive orders! Of course, he served more than 11 years as President. So that’s about 338 Executive Orders a year.
Still, Biden holds his own among his contemporaries, and then some.
By March 9, Biden signed 37 executive orders. That’s more than twice the number President Obama signed at this point in his presidency (18), and more than double that of President Trump (15).
A full list of Biden’s Executive Orders is below. It doesn’t include “Proclamations” and “Memorandum” which are similar to Executive Orders.
Meantime, here’s how recent U.S. Presidents compare with one another in terms of Executive Orders in a single term for purposes of comparison.
Executive Orders in a Single Presidential Term
504 Harry S. Truman (D)
325 Lyndon Johnson (D)
320 Jimmy Carter (D)
266 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
247 Richard Nixon (R)
220 Donald Trump (R)
214 John F. Kennedy (D)
213 Ronald Reagan (R)
200 William Clinton (D)
173 George W. Bush (R)
169 Gerald Ford (R)
166 George H.W. Bush (R)
147 Barack Obama (D)
Topics of President Biden’s Executive Orders through March 9, 2021:
- Racial equity
- Decennial census
- Revocation of Trump financial principles, such as preventing taxpayer money from being used for corporate bailouts; revocation of Trump’s poverty reduction order, and other Trump actions.
- Supply Chains
- Revocation of Trump order on expanding apprenticeships
- Establishing White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
- Blocking property regarding Burma
- Enhancing programs to resettle climate change refugees
- Task force on the reunification of families
- Managing migration and asylum-seekers
- Restoring faith in our legal immigration systems, inclusion efforts for new Americans
- Strengthening Medicaid and Obamacare
- Advisors on science and technology
- Climate crisis world wide
- Banning privately-operated prisons
- American workers
- Inclusivity in the military
- Protecting federal workforce
- Economic relief on Covid-19
- Establishing pandemic testing board
- Protecting worker health and safety
- Supporting reopening of schools
- Equitable pandemic response and recovery
- Sustainable public health supply chain
- Ensuring data-driven Covid response
- Expanding care and treatment for Covid
- Promoting Covid safety in travel
- Ethics in the Executive Branch
- Preventing gender identity discrimination
- Climate crisis
- Revoking Trump orders limiting federal regulation
- Revising immigration enforcement
- Covid-19 response and global leadership
- Mask-wearing required on federal property
- Advancing racial equity
- Establishing gender policy council
- Sexual violence in education
Thanks to the thousands who have already supported!
Sharyl and Full Measure Team,
Senator Obama (( Illinois )) got it right, when
he said :
“Signing orders are unconstitutional.”
Why ?—because they negate our We-the-People
Congress, negating government of, for, and by
the will of the people.
Signing orders are Sign of a Dictatorship.
-Rick
It’s very easy to sign them quickly when you don’t have to worry about details like understanding what they actually say.
Mr. B gets turned on every morning after his batteries have fully charged and is sat down in the Oval set to sign EO’s written by the DS Shadow Govt. operatives.
Then he rests and recharges while flown to plants and different locations nationwide. Then he stumbles around plants and asks a few child-like questions. Sometimes he bumbles through a little incoherent conference before they take him to recharge and rest until the next day ~ while Ms. Harris co-mingles with Swamp Creatures that are running the show (for now).
My suggestion is to donate to the new PAC (vs the RNC) to rid the Republican Party of Rhino Neo-Cons ~ allowing the original platform to return to basic, logical, fair, governing.
Hi Sharyl A,
It’s always interesting to see timelines, comparisons, etc the way you have laid things out here, just to look at numbers even before drilling down into the details. Is this even taught in journalism school any more?
I wasn’t sure where best to let readers know, but Gov. Whitmer in MI, who was also fond of exectuive orders, is being sued. She issued c. 170 of them last year, for the pandemic. And then the MI supreme court removed her executive powers and — poof– there went most of those orders.
The same outfit that sued her last year (and WON!!) is preparing another one, this one for refusing to release nursing home data and covid death data.
https://twitter.com/Charlieleduff/status/1365673425101021185
Hmmm, could this at all be tied to the agreement signed with former MI health commissioner Robert Gordon?
https://twitter.com/pjcolbeck/status/1366803239975419906
As I Michigander I am watching this closely. The Gov needs to be held accountable. She is one of the many who has used the pandemic as a money/power grab.