Biden's Infrastructure Bills Leave a Legacy of Big Spending and Little Payoff
The outgoing president's signature legislative achievements spent tens of billions of dollars with little to show.
When President Joe Biden vacates the White House later this month, talk will turn to his legacy: What did he accomplish in office? Which among his achievements will outlast him? Even though Biden came into office with ambitious promises, his scorecard looks unimpressive.
The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act apportioned more than $1 trillion to a wide variety of projects deemed "infrastructure," including $550 billion toward "'new' investments and programs." Among its line items, the law included $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle (E.V.) chargers across the country.
The rollout was uninspiring. Under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which controls $5 billion of the $7.5 billion total, only 183 chargers have come online at 44 stations across the country, more than three years after Biden signed the bill into law. (Under federal rules, each station funded by the law is required to have at least four charging ports.)
In fairness, not all of the cash has been spent: The NEVI has only allocated $2.4 billion and awarded $520 million, as of press time.
Still, it's a dispiriting result from an administration that came into office with big promises to "build a national network of 500,000 charging stations."
Similarly, the 2021 infrastructure law included the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, with $42 billion to expand broadband internet access across the country. In his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Biden equated it with the New Deal, calling the broadband expansion "not unlike what Roosevelt did with electricity."
But three years after its creation, the program has disbursed no money and supplied broadband to zero households. "Thanks to a federal affordability requirement that telecommunications companies say is too tight, many states have sparred with Washington over their funding applications, delaying the rollout," Politico wrote in September.
"States face a common issue - navigating the complex BEAD process," Misty Giles, the director of Montana's Department of Administration, testified before the House Subcommittee on Energy & Technology in September 2024. Giles called the approval process "akin to building a plane while flying it without having the necessary instructions to be successful." She also said the government "has provided either no guidance, guidance given too late, or guidance changing midstream, all with a lack of appreciation for state operations and costs and the needs of our telecommunication providers," creating "a chaotic implementation environment."
Biden's supporters would counter that while the initial rollout was underwhelming, much of this spending is designed to pay off over time: NEVI, for example, is apportioned $1 billion per year through FY 2026 when the program's funding runs out.
When Biden exited the presidential race in July after a particularly disastrous debate performance, the Associated Press noted, "His record includes legislation that will rebuild the country in ways that will likely be seen over the next dozen years, even if voters did not immediately appreciate it."
But it's clear by this point that Biden's big-spending dreams were hamstrung by bureaucracy and red tape, much of which was included in the bills themselves or in administration guidelines.
"The rules require states accepting the money to make sure providers plan for climate change, reach out to unionized workforces and hire locally," Politico wrote about the broadband program. "One vague but broad provision requires low-cost options and fast connections for 'middle class families' at 'reasonable prices'"—an unclear description that many states have struggled to implement.
Similarly, the NEVI program is remarkably complicated, and the equipment necessary to build out that many chargers is in short supply—requiring representatives from every state and territory to compete over a finite amount of resources.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.) called NEVI's protracted timeline "a vast administrative failure."
Meanwhile, as federal programs have struggled to meet government E.V. goals, the private sector has excelled. In the three years after Biden signed the infrastructure law, Tesla Motors more than doubled its public charging stations in the U.S., going from 29,281 chargers at 3,254 stations to 62,421 chargers at 6,706 stations. (In fairness, Tesla received more than $17 million in NEVI funds as of early 2024.) Ford Motor Co. announced last year that for any motorists buying new Ford E.V.s, the company would install a charger in their home for free.
While unlikely, it's certainly possible that with hindsight, Biden will have plenty to crow about. But when stacking up his list of accomplishments next to what the private sector has achieved in the same amount of time, there's no comparison. Private companies, largely without the benefit of taxpayer funds, outperform government grant programs at every turn.
