Biden’s New Deal Ambitions Run Into Political, Economic Constraints

President Biden and his aides invoke liberal icons Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson as role models for the historical impression he hopes to leave. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, late last month boasted that Mr. Biden’s spending plan is “twice as big, in real dollars, as the New Deal.”

In dollars alone, Mr. Biden’s program is indeed big. But there are big differences between the political and economic landscape those earlier presidents faced and the present day that have already circumscribed Mr. Biden’s plans and raise questions about their durability.

Roosevelt,...