Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.
Obama appears poised to break his campaign pledge to give the public five days to review a bill before he signs it.
Obama scheduled a bill signing for 4:35 p.m. Wednesday, even though the House has yet to vote on the legislation expanding a children’s health insurance program. The legislation is expected to win final approval only hours before the president will make it law. . .
Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act only two days after it received final passage last week, and it wasn’t posted on the White House website until after it became law.
(Via Instapundit.)
The bill has now been signed, so the pledge has already been violated twice. In fact, as far as I’m aware, those are the only two bills that have been sent to the President thus far.
The “sunlight before signing” principle was just one of several ethical principles promised by candidate Obama that have already been violated or are on the verge of it. A few more from the same web page are:
- Close the Revolving Door on Former and Future Employers: No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.
- Make White House Communications Public: Obama will amend executive orders to ensure that communications about regulatory policymaking between persons outside government and all White House staff are disclosed to the public.
- Free Career Officials from the Influence of Politics: Obama will issue an executive order asking all new hires at the agencies to sign a form affirming that no political appointee offered them the job solely on the basis of political affiliation or contribution.
Several top appointments have already violated the lobbyist pledge. As far as executive orders go, it’s always possible he’ll still issue them eventually, but after two weeks in office the President has already issued the executive orders that are important to him.
UPDATE: We plan to live up to our ethical standards very, very soon. Heh.
Internet Scofflaw 