The Small Detail You May Have Missed in the News of Obama Signing the Budget Bill Thursday
On Thursday morning, Obama signed the much-maligned, bipartisan budget deal
along with a defense bill and five other pieces of legislation while
vacationing in Hawaii. But there’s a small detail in that sentence
that’s interesting: unlike when he “signed” the fiscal cliff cuts into
law during last Christmas’s Hawaiian vacation, Obama actually put his
signature to these bills in person.
Why is that significant? Because as CBS’s Mark Knoller points out, that means that bills had to be flown to Hawaii to be signed:
WH
spokesman says Pres Obama signed each the 7 bills into law today by
hand. No Autopen. It means all the bills had to be flown to Hawaii..
@markknoller
Mark Knoller
It’s unclear how much money such a trip
cost — or if it was even done as a special flight (the bills could have
come with someone on an already scheduled flight, for example).
Either way, last year the president took the opposite approach and faced criticism for it.
In order to sign the controversial cuts
into law in 2012, Obama read the bill and then ordered it to be signed
via autopen back in Washington.
“We received the bill late this afternoon, and it was immediately processed,” and administration official noted last Jan. 3. “A copy was delivered to the president for review. He then directed the bill be signed by autopen.”
The Washington Times cited
Republican members of Congress and a Syracuse law professor who
questioned the validity of any bill signed into law using the autopen,
especially when Obama isn’t in the room.
“I’m very, very surprised that this is
now the third time that President Obama has done this, especially given
that it was the Bush OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] that produced the
memo and Bush himself refused to take advantage of the autopen,” Prof. Terry Turnipseed
told the Times back then. “Even Bush did not think that this was
something that should have been utilized on a constitutional basis.”
Still, as the Times notes, the Justice Department under George W. Bush did deem such use constitutional.
All that hasn’t stopped a fresh set of criticism for Obama signing the laws in person this year. The website Weasel Zippers deemed
the move an attempt to secure a “propaganda pic” that “milk[ed] the
taxpayers.” The site was referring to the official photo released by the
White House showing the president signing this year’s bills:
Obama signs one of several bills into law on Thursday, Dec. 26. (Source: White House photo/Pete Souza)
(H/T: Weasel Zippers)
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