President Biden has earned dubious budget-busting distinctions that put him in a fiscal class with former President Richard Nixon.
1) The current Commander in Chief has the largest White House staff since former President Nixon was in office.
2) He can't keep staff, with staffers bolting President Biden's administration at an alarming 77%.
That's according to an independent analysis from "Open the Books" which reports that at $60.6 million a year, Biden has the largest White House payroll since 1971.
Increasing the national debt to new heights isn't the only thing the Biden White House likes to spend taxpayer money on. President Biden added 40,000 workers to the federal payroll since January 2021 and gave them 4.7% raises in 2023. This is the largest pay raise since the Carter Administration.
Biden’s White House staff costs nearly $61 million annually, $225 million since he came to office. Since entering office, 435 out of his initial 560 White House staffers left for a shocking 77% turnover rate. With a turnover rate like this, it would be difficult for any business or political office to run smoothly.
The Biden administration recently released its annual report to Congress on the White House Office Personnel. The payroll data includes employee name, status, salary, and position title for all White House employees as of July 1, 2024. Open the Books then did a deep dive into the data.
“This payroll was made public just hours before the statutory deadline and days after the presidential debate set off a torrent of questions about President Biden’s ability to serve,” Open The Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski said in a press release. “Perhaps unsurprisingly, the support system around him has grown historically large and costly.”
Open the Books report reveals that no White House since the Richard Nixon administration employed 500 staffers until Biden became president. The Biden White House employed 560 in FY2021; 474 in FY2022; and 524 in FY2023; and the headcount increased by 41, to 565 this year.
Biden employs 152 more staffers than Trump (413) and 97 more than Obama (468) (at the same point in their respective presidencies.
The authors of the report point to the large Biden White House payroll as the “leading indicator of his commitment to expand the federal bureaucracy at all levels.”
“During Biden’s first three years, more than 40,000 bureaucrats were added to the federal payroll across the 123 executive agencies, outside of the Department of Defense, U.S. Post Office, and intelligence services. In the first nine days of his presidency, Biden issued many executive orders expanding the size, scope, and power of the federal bureaucracy,” says Open the Books.
This makes Biden a firm ally of the bureaucratic state. Biden went so far as to sign an Executive Order that would make it difficult for Donald Trump, or any future president, to reduce the federal bureaucracy.
The Biden administration finalized a rule that would elongate the process of reducing the size of the federal government “anticipating that Trump may try to fire federal workers if he wins the 2024 presidential election” according to Open the Books.
What do these 565 Biden aides do? Biden is deeply committed to DEI initiatives and has several highly paid staffers tasked with “improving racial and gender equity”. The White House pays the deputy assistant to the president for racial justice and equity $155,000 a year and its director of global gender issues $169,429 per year.
The White House employs 106 “special assistants to the president” on policy issues such as “gun violence prevention” and “climate policy” collectively costing taxpayers $13.9 million for FY2024. Biden is still paying “pandemic response” staffers, spending $723,500 on their salaries despite declaring the pandemic over in September 2022.
The report reveals that Jill Biden’s staff increased by four employees, to 24 this year, which equals the number under Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama was widely criticized for having a staff that large. Both Mrs. Biden and Obama far exceed former First Lady Melania Trump’s highest staff level of 11. The total cost of First Lady staffers in FY2024 is $2.5 million.
Interestingly, the Office of the Vice President claims it is not required to release its payroll data. Open the Books believes that the Vice President’s office should have to release their expenditures the same as the White House and First Lady and suggests that a lawsuit may be required to determine if the Freedom of Information Act applies to their office.