Oval office, White House

Robert Schmad
Daily Caller News Foundation

President Joe Biden has spent $225 million paying hundreds of White House staffers since the 2021 fiscal year, federal records show.

The president’s spending on staffers totaled $60.8 million for the 2024 fiscal year, marking the highest level adjusted for inflation recorded over the past two presidential administrations, according to an analysis conducted by Open The Books. Biden employed over 500 staffers in three of the four fiscal years he has been in office, including 565 during the 2024 fiscal year, a headcount benchmark not hit since the Nixon administration in 1971.

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“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.”

Biden has been an ally to bureaucrats, adding 40,000 workers to the federal payroll during his first three years in office, according to Open The Books. In addition to swelling the size of the bureaucracy, Biden also opted to give bureaucrats an average raise of 4.7% in 2023, the largest such raise since the Carter administration.

Former President Donald Trump raised pay for federal workers by 1% during 2017 and by 2.6% in 2020. Biden’s pay raise even exceeded those awarded under the Obama administration.

Trump signed an executive order in 2020 that would have removed protections for some bureaucrats, making them easier for the president to fire. The Biden administration has since finalized a rule that would elongate such a process, anticipating that Trump may try to fire federal workers if he

The president retains several highly paid staffers tasked with improving racial and gender equity, federal records show. 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 ranging from “gun violence prevention” to “climate policy,” collectively costing taxpayers $13.9 million for the 2024 fiscal year, according to Open The Books. Additionally, Biden is still paying “pandemic response” staffers, spending $723,500 on their salaries despite having declared the pandemic over in September 2022.

First lady Jill Biden’s staff is also twice as large as Melania Trump’s was at its highest point, according to Open The Books. The Office of the Vice President claims it is not required to release its payroll data.

Biden had overseen over $11 trillion in spending as of December 2023, according to the House Budget Committee. The national debt increased by $2.5 trillion during the first three years of the Trump administration, compared to $4.7 trillion during Biden’s first three years, according to Fox Business.

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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