Friedberg’s prediction was that, from early 2021 until roughly the 2022 midterms, Democrats would be able to keep pushing through large spending bills because they held unified control of the federal government.

Unified Democratic control during the period
In the 117th Congress (January 3, 2021–January 3, 2023), Democrats held the presidency, a majority in the House, and de‑facto control of the 50–50 Senate via Vice President Harris’s tie‑breaking vote, giving them a federal “trifecta” through the 2022 midterms. (en.wikipedia.org)

Major large spending laws enacted before the 2022 midterms
During that April 2021–November 2022 window, several very large spending packages were in fact enacted under Democratic control:

• American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 – a $1.9 trillion COVID‑relief law, signed March 11, 2021, just weeks before the episode, providing stimulus checks, expanded unemployment benefits, state and local aid, and more. (aarp.org)
• Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (“bipartisan infrastructure law”) – about $1.2 trillion in authorized spending (with $550 billion in new spending), signed November 15, 2021. (phmsa.dot.gov)
• Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 – a $1.5 trillion omnibus funding bill (including Ukraine aid), signed March 15, 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)
• CHIPS and Science Act – roughly $280 billion in new funding for semiconductors and research, signed August 9, 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – a major budget‑reconciliation law, with about $437 billion in new spending (mostly climate/energy and health) and $737 billion in offsets, signed August 16, 2022. (en.wikipedia.org)

Contemporary overviews of Biden’s first‑term domestic record routinely cite the American Rescue Plan, the $1 trillion‑plus infrastructure law, and the Inflation Reduction Act as landmark spending achievements of the 117th Congress, all enacted before the 2022 midterms. (apnews.com)

Constraints did emerge but did not negate the core prediction
Democrats were constrained on the specific Build Back Better Act, a larger social‑spending package that passed the House but stalled in the Senate because Senator Joe Manchin opposed it, leading to months of negotiation and its eventual replacement by the slimmer Inflation Reduction Act. (en.wikipedia.org) This shows that their power was not literally unlimited and that internal moderates imposed real limits.

However, Friedberg’s normalized claim is not that Democrats would pass every wish‑list item, but that unified control would allow them to continue passing large spending bills up to the midterms with relatively fewer constraints than in a divided government. Measured against that standard, the period from early 2021 to the 2022 midterms did indeed see a sustained run of very large spending laws—relief, infrastructure, industrial policy, and climate/health—enabled by Democratic control of both chambers and the presidency.

Given the volume and scale of spending legislation actually enacted in that 1.5‑year window, the prediction that Democrats would keep being able to pass large spending bills under unified control is overall borne out, even though some specific ambitions (like the original Build Back Better framework) were pared back or blocked.