What do people make of this WSJ article on Obama's signing statement. Kerry in the story, too.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124761651200542351.html



If you recall the IMF agreement was made at the G20 summit. It was viewed as a coup by Obama (an economist I respect whose name escapes me praised the deal). But Republicans balked because they said it was "bailing out international bankers". Um, no. But regardless, Obama needed Democrats to get it passed. Apparently, one wrinkle in negotiations with some Jewish Democrats was that no money went to Iran.



I think this one is a tough call. Although Congress was right about their misgivings, I am not sure America can dictate what the IMF and World Bank do. As to signing statements, they have always been around. The problem was Bush used them an unprecedented amount of times. It is too early to tell if Obama misuses them.

What do others make of this? (Read the whole article, of course)

This was a part of the WaPo column about the tight message control around the President:



The House put the restrictions BACK into the IMF funds by a vote of 429-2. Ah, that is no cliff-hanger vote. I think that Rahm Emmanuel had better stop trying to emulate H.R. Haldeman's tenure at the White House and deal with others as both adults and independent operators with their own Consitutional mandates to operate.

For the Nixon/Watergate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Haldeman#Career_in_the_Nixon_administration">memory-impaired:



Seriously, the Nixon White House and H.R. Haldeman are not proper role models. Neither a Democratic President or his CoS should be looking back on that for a reference. That is how to ruin a Presidency.

This President is too cloistered. This totally avoidable flap is symptom, not yet problem, but a very worrisome symptom. This is not the first Presidential Signing Statement for Obama. He is not doing what he said he would in terms of running a transparent and constitutional presidency. (Neither is the Republic in danger yet. But this is not good.)

BTW, the President will probably lose a fight over the F-22 funding. Why would any legislator feel bad about taking him on about this? After all, the President doesn't feel a thing about arbitrarily overriding Congress, as this article shows.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Rahm needs to learn that.

sometimes throws things in that simply are not workable on an international body like the IMF and the World Bank.

Thanks for the history lesson on the Nixon White House.

There are genuine and legitimate tensions between the executive and legislative branches of the government over power and control. These tensions help compose the system of checks and balances that are meant to be a protection against an overwhelming hold of power by one branch over the others.

Signing statements, in and of themselves, are simply an "explanation" by the Executive Branch of their understanding of how a law is to be implemented. That is indeed their right to issue these understandings and to clarify how they will instruct the various agencies of the government to implement the law.

What deeply concerns me and sets my alarm bells to ringing are the signing statements that unilaterally discard the legally passed legislation of the US Congress. I like President Obama and support him. But I do not support any Chief Executive who is doing an arrogant power grab and asserting executive prerogative over legislation and particularly not the power to negate laws of Congress duly enacted and signed. That is exactly how we wind up with Dick Cheney's who form their own CIA hit squads and decide not to tell any other branch of the government.

My loyalty is to the rule of law and the Constitution. Nothing and no one tops that, not man, woman or Party. And these arrogant dismissals of "deals" with the Congress that are made and then airily discarded because they no longer felt like they should do them is very worrisome.

Arrogance is the enemy of people in power. It is responsible for a lot of very bad things that have happened in the country. I do not want to see the Obama Administration go off and engage in dismissive and condescending behavior with the Congress and then act all surprised when the Congress asserts it's Constitutional rights as a co-equal branch of government. That is a totally avoidable situation. A fight of that kind would be bad for this country as well.

I know that Rahm Emmanuel used to work for the Clintons and is considered their friend. However, I do not trust that man. I think he is arrogant and picks unnecessary fights and is perfectly willing to engage in a destructive "pissing contest" just because he can. Not a good thing and it bears watching in my book.

People TRIED to warn Republicans that this kind of power would not go away, and that a Democrat could wield it just as easily. BUT, we are in a situation where we have a stacked VERY conservative Supreme Court which is going to side with executive power more often than not. And it will be that way for the next 30 years at least.

Going back to your boredom with the Sotomayor hearings: the reason it is dullsville is because she is replacing Souter (who possibly may lean more "liberal" than she does), which will not affect the Court whatsoever. Maybe it was "bad politics" but I am glad John Kerry fought the Alito nomination. Really bad decisions are going to be made in the Court for years to come which will aid and abett the troubling actions of the executive branch.

President Obama made many promises when he was running, but the one that demonstrated his willingness to be open and honest with the American public was him saying his presidency would be transparent and would follow the Constitution. I hope the president remembers how important it is to the American public that he honor this promise.

at this point. I also think people are really misreading Obama and the way he runs his White House. He isn't remotely cloistered, never will be. He does, however, believe in message control and is 100% in charge of the message. He just doles it out at a little slower pace than what the 24 hour news junkie would prefer.

There have been 7 signing statements.
Omnibus
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900145/pdf/DCPD-200900145.pdf
The Omnibus bill is the only one with a signing statement of any concern, imo. One of them goes to the same kind of foreign affairs as the supplemental did, another to an issue of executive privilege, and a couple of others with budget and funding that appear to give the President authority he doesn’t have, which is what he stated. The only one that really concerns me is the Peacekeeping Missions because it appears that funding has been withheld and I don’t think Obama has the Constitutional authority to override Congress when it withdraws funding. But I don’t think I’ve heard much on that one.

The rest are either rhetorical or staking out already clear law. It’s clear Congress doesn’t have the right to demand who a Secretary appoints, or to direct the White House to furnish every speck of data on any inquiry, or to override the President’s Constitutional duties in foreign affairs, treaties, etc.

Stimulus
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900088/pdf/DCPD-200900088.pdf
Rhetorical

Public Land Omnibus
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900201/pdf/DCPD-200900201.pdf
Section 8203 says Secretary of the Interior shall appoint members of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Commission. That is a restriction on the power of the Secretary so Obama changed it to “congressional recommendations, but not to be bound by them in making appointments to the Commission.”

Fraud & Recovery Act
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900387/pdf/DCPD-200900387.pdf
“Section 5(d) of the Act requires every department, agency, bureau, board, commission,
office, independent establishment, or instrumentality of the United States to furnish to the
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a legislative entity, any information related to any
Commission inquiry. As my Administration communicated to the Congress during the legislative process, the executive branch will construe this subsection of the bill not to abrogate
any constitutional privilege.”

Reagan Commission
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900424/pdf/DCPD-200900424.pdf
Limits Congressional participation

Supplemental (2)
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900512/pdf/DCPD-200900512.pdf
However, provisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403
and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign
relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with
international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the
Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting
my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900501/pdf/DCPD-200900501.pdf
Thanks Congress