As Joe Biden runs for president in 2020, national and global discussions are focused on one issue: the COVID-19 pandemic. While then-President Donald Trump downplayed the severity of the outbreak, Biden pledged to increase COVID-19 testing, vaccinate 50 million people within 100 days and get the virus under control.
But his campaign promises extend beyond the pandemic. Biden also said he would raise taxes only on the wealthiest Americans, called for racial justice and adopted policies to mitigate climate change. He said he would forgive all undergraduate student loan debt, lower prescription drug costs and end online sales of guns and ammunition.
Over four years, PolitiFact has monitored progress on 99 campaign promises on the Biden Promise Tracker. PolitiFact reporters track each issue and measure results (rather than intent or effort) with final ratings of promises made, compromised and broken.
The system is the same one used by Obameter, which tracked more than 500 of Barack Obama's pledges, and the 2017-2020 editions of the Trump-O-Meter, which tracked the president-elect's first 102 commitments during term.
Our analysis of Biden's performance on 99 promises found:
Biden fulfilled 33 promises.
Biden compromised on the 32nd.
Biden broke 34 promises.
Trump kept about 24 of his promises, compromised on 23, and broke 55. (Obama's promise meter is difficult to compare with the Biden and Trump trackers because we track five times as many promises as Biden and Trump, and Obama has two more terms to fulfill those promises.)
Our Commitment Scale helps voters gauge whether the president is keeping his promises to the American public. But for a number of reasons, a higher share of promises delivered and a smaller share of promises delivered do not automatically translate into a successful presidency.
One is that issues that dominate the year before a president takes office may not be the most salient issues a few years later. For example, in 2020, solving the COVID-19 problem was inevitable. But by 2024, voters are more interested in inflation and border security.
Another note is that our commitment meter tracks single, verifiable commitments rather than the broad goals behind them. That means the president can get credit for specific commitments on our commitment schedule, but cannot achieve the larger goals that underpin those commitments.
Biden's pledge to expand access to affordable housing, for example, earned a compromise rating. While his administration has taken steps to increase access, gridlock in Congress has hampered Biden's efforts to pass far-reaching housing aid. The lack of affordable housing has worsened since Biden took office, largely due to long-standing challenges such as low inventory and high demand.
Another example is Biden's pledge to end wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which also received a Compromise rating. Biden withdrew troops from Afghanistan, but he did not end the war in the Middle East, especially after Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel's military response. Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan was also chaotic and deadly, killing 13 U.S. service members and severely damaging his public support.
However, commitment ratings do reflect a president's ability to set his agenda. Here's a rundown of what Biden has and hasn't accomplished.
The president can make some commitments unilaterally through executive orders. Other commitments would require changes to the law, meaning Congress would have to cooperate — making them harder to achieve in today's highly polarized political environment.
Promises Biden signed with executive orders include reversing Trump's "Muslim ban," reversing Trump's family separation policy, rejoining the World Health Organization and rolling back the transgender military ban.
Biden personally nominated the first Black woman to the Supreme Court - the Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court in 2022. He also created a bipartisan commission to consider reforms to the Supreme Court.
Biden has used the executive branch to enact regulations, fulfilling his promise to restore federal funding to Planned Parenthood and establish new fuel economy standards.
The one action Biden was able to take on his own — pardoning his son, Hunter Biden — ultimately undermined one of his own promises. With this pardon, we view as a broken promise his promise to prevent the White House from intervening in federal investigations and prosecutions.
Sometimes, even presidential promises that do not require congressional action are difficult to keep.
For example, the Biden administration moved to allow the importation of prescription drugs from other countries. But Florida, the first state to obtain this right from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has yet to exercise it. Therefore, commitment ratings are a compromise.
Foreign policy sometimes presents obstacles. Biden won on his promise to work with allies to negotiate denuclearization with North Korea (which didn't achieve much given North Korea's intransigence) and to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal (which failed as tensions between Iran and the United States grew) A compromise.
The price of enacting policy through executive orders is that future administrations can easily overturn them. Biden relied on executive orders to gain support for some of the earliest promises he could make, such as reversing Trump's controversial immigration policies. Trump has said he will reverse policies such as the military transgender ban and fuel economy standards when he returns to office.
Biden is a 36-year veteran of the U.S. Senate who secured passage of major legislation in his first two years in office, when Democrats controlled both chambers. But in his final two years in office, Biden accomplished little as the government was divided.
In 2022, he signed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which helped fulfill his promise to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act; it also allowed him to compromise on requiring background checks on all gun sales.
Other times, passage of bills requires a special Senate procedure known as "reconciliation," which allows a simple majority to pass legislation instead of requiring 60 votes for a final vote. That meant Biden had to negotiate with two centrists in his own Senate caucus — then-West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kirsten Sinema — to get by. Gain a majority.
Biden signed two laws passed in this way: the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
The American Rescue Plan Act was a sweeping package of pandemic relief that was later criticized for exacerbating pandemic-induced inflation. It also fulfills Biden's promise to help state and local governments prevent budget shortfalls.
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed after inflation peaked, included provisions on climate change, corporate taxes and health care. One provision fulfills his promise to repeal a law that prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices.
Parts of both laws also gave Biden some compromise support. These include Biden's promise to provide up to $8,000 in tax credits for child care (which lasted only one year), expand broadband to every American (the network is still being built) and increase the corporate tax rate to 28%. (Biden stopped short of securing across-the-board tax increases on businesses, but imposed additional taxes on some of the largest companies.)
Yet Biden has often simply been unable to get Congress to support his agenda. On his first day as president, Biden introduced a bill that would create a path to citizenship for nearly 11 million people. It has nowhere to go. Biden has also failed to win support from lawmakers for his pledges to ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and extend a 1973 decision that the U.S. Supreme Court has now overturned. The provisions of Roe v Wade were codified. Court case protecting abortion access nationwide.
At times, Biden has used executive orders to bypass Congress, but courts have often blocked those efforts. He sought blanket student loan debt forgiveness through executive order, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked that plan. Biden then turned to his executive authority to reduce student debt for certain groups in a more piecemeal way.
After the Senate failed to follow the House in passing the labor-backed PRO Act of 2021, Biden used his appointment power to appoint pro-labor members to the National Labor Relations Board, who have since voted to make it easier for workers to unionize in some cases.
Sometimes, Biden simply breaks his promises. Later in his term, he signed bipartisan legislation to boost Social Security benefits for certain state and local workers whose pensions were taken out of their monthly payouts. That means Biden compromised on his promise to expand and increase Social Security benefits while reneging on his promise to put Social Security on track for long-term solvency. The bill moves up Social Security's bankruptcy date by six months.
As with any president, there is a disconnect between what the public thinks the president can do and what he can do.
This is known as the "Green Lantern" theory, a term coined by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan. The term comes from a group of characters in the DC Comics universe who possess rings capable of producing "green energy projections" of immense power. If the ring doesn't work, it's because the user doesn't believe in themselves.
According to this theory, the public believes that "the president can achieve any political or policy goal if he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics," whether through public communications or legislative wisdom. Nyhan thinks this is misleading.
John J Pitney Jr, professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College, told CNN that most voters are unaware of some of the major projects that will ultimately benefit them. He pointed to infrastructure spending in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, which allocate billions of dollars in federal funding for projects such as broadband access, roads and bridges.
“It takes years or decades to build a project,” Pitney said. “His presidency is going to be a tough question on the (Advanced Placement) government exam when people actually benefit from these programs.”
Biden earned compromise ratings for his pledges to require background checks on all gun sales and to legalize marijuana. But on both issues, he achieved policy results not seen in decades.
Princeton University political scientist Frances Lee said Biden was not necessarily a major factor in the gun bill victory. Lee said he tapped into the national shock following mass shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that put Republicans "on the wrong side of public opinion." ". Public opinion on marijuana has also changed, she said, with even Republican states voting to expand its use.
Candidates also have an incentive to overdeliver on their promises.
"Presidential candidates almost always exaggerate what they can accomplish in office using presidential power, which in formal terms is quite weak," Pitney said.
James M Curry, a political scientist at the University of Utah, said candidates will pursue lofty goals no matter what because if they don't, voters won't pay much attention.
"You can't inspire voters with a platform that doesn't try to accomplish anything big," Curry said. "This leads to a cycle of overpromise and underdelivery that absolutely leaves at least some voters permanently disappointed with the president, the party and Congress."