How does Biden really stack up on Executive Orders?

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:

1. Racial equity
2. Decennial census
3. 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.
4. Supply Chains
5. Revocation of Trump order on expanding apprenticeships
6. Establishing White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
7. Blocking property regarding Burma
8. Enhancing programs to resettle climate change refugees
9. Task force on the reunification of families
10. Managing migration and asylum-seekers
11. Restoring faith in our legal immigration systems, inclusion efforts for new Americans
12. Strengthening Medicaid and Obamacare
13. Advisors on science and technology
14. Climate crisis world wide
15. Banning privately-operated prisons
16. American workers
17. Inclusivity in the military
18. Protecting federal workforce
19. Economic relief on Covid-19
20. Establishing pandemic testing board
21. Protecting worker health and safety
22. Supporting reopening of schools
23. Equitable pandemic response and recovery
24. Sustainable public health supply chain
25. Ensuring data-driven Covid response
26. Expanding care and treatment for Covid
27. Promoting Covid safety in travel
28. Ethics in the Executive Branch
29. Preventing gender identity discrimination
30. Climate crisis
31. Revoking Trump orders limiting federal regulation
32. Revising immigration enforcement
33. Covid-19 response and global leadership
34. Mask-wearing required on federal property
35. Advancing racial equity
36. Establishing gender policy council
37. Sexual violence in education