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I guess you don't remember the only words that came out of the mouth of Harry Reid during the first 6 years of the Bush Administration. You know, filibuster? Why Bush never had any kind of problem appointing anybody, at all, did he?
Obama considers bi-partisanship to be my way or the highway and he proved it several times by getting the Senate to allow many bills to go through without any kind of help from the other party. I wonder if you have any idea what bi-partisanship means.
"President Reagan issued 250 signing statements, 86 of which (34%) contained provisions objecting to one or more of the statutory provisions signed into law. President George H. W. Bush continued this practice, issuing 228 signing statements, 107 of which (47%) raised objections. President Clinton’s conception of presidential power proved to be largely consonant with that of the preceding two administrations. In turn, President Clinton made aggressive use of the signing statement, issuing 381 statements, 70 of which (18%) raised constitutional or legal objections. President George W. Bush has continued this practice, issuing 152 signing statements, 118 of which (78%) contain some type of challenge or objection."
I understand why you posted this and it is great for comparative purposes, but one consequence of posting numbers in this case is that you move the issue from signing statements to WHO was the worst transgressor.
While I understand that some will ardently disagree with me, I see signing statements as a means in which the Executive Branch, the President, enacts legislation with NO oversight, review, or means to reject. At the time of this article, Obama had used 10 in 2 years, so yes this is better than 100, 200, or 10000000, but it is still at least five times a year the President, our nations executive has decided to legislate as he alone sees fit. Five times is five times too many and this was something I've chided both Bush's, Clinton and any other President. Signing statements and executive orders are power on a scale hard to imagine and far too much for any single man to wield in a Republic.
This actually happens with great frequency in contemporary news entertainment and I can point to the WIKI Leaks event as a good example. After the release of this content, the discussion was framed in terms of whether WIKI Leaks broke laws or violated any state secrets. What everybody totally ignored was WHAT wiki leaks presented, which to me is something that our media today is horrid at doing.
Picture for a moment, a guy who raped an under aged girl and got caught. If his argument is, well my neighbor raped more girls than I did, this doesn't make it any better, yet this is what we do in more subtle ways every day on on nearly every issue. I realize this hyperbole, but you get what I mean.
"President Reagan issued 250 signing statements, 86 of which (34%) contained provisions objecting to one or more of the statutory provisions signed into law. President George H. W. Bush continued this practice, issuing 228 signing statements, 107 of which (47%) raised objections. President Clinton’s conception of presidential power proved to be largely consonant with that of the preceding two administrations. In turn, President Clinton made aggressive use of the signing statement, issuing 381 statements, 70 of which (18%) raised constitutional or legal objections. President George W. Bush has continued this practice, issuing 152 signing statements, 118 of which (78%) contain some type of challenge or objection."
You need to go on and read the next paragraph. The numbers you cited were based on the number of actual bills that had presidential signing statements. Many bills are broadly based and cover many different areas of legislation--"W" Bush in reality had a much higher number because he issued multiple statements within each bill--he'd pick out the parts he liked and issued signing statements on passages he didn't. I don't like it that Clinton used them either, but his numbers were far below W's. Obama has done 10. I think they need to be abolished or some parameters set on them--there's way too much room for abuse.
If the GOP regains control of one or both branches of Congress, as widely expected, stand by for the lame duck legislators, working closely with Obama, to go wild in the two remaining months of their terms. They could grant the president even more new powers and push expensive new social spending bills to Obamas desk before they leave. After January, expect major battles between Obama and the new Congress to rage all during the second half of his term.
The Dem's don't have 60 votes in the Senate to vote for the end of a filibuster. They can't pass anything during the lame duck session unless they have republicans willing to vote with them.
I guess you don't remember the only words that came out of the mouth of Harry Reid during the first 6 years of the Bush Administration. You know, filibuster? Why Bush never had any kind of problem appointing anybody, at all, did he?
Obama considers bi-partisanship to be my way or the highway and he proved it several times by getting the Senate to allow many bills to go through without any kind of help from the other party. I wonder if you have any idea what bi-partisanship means.
No President has the power to "get the Senate to allow many bills to go through without any kind of help from the other party." In the House of Representatives, bills are passed with a majority vote--if you have 50% of the votes you win. Under normal circumstances, the Senate operates in the same manner. However, there is a rule in the Senate that allows the minority party (now the republicans) to endlessly debate a bill--it's called a filibuster--the process keeps the bill from ever coming to a vote so it can be passed. It's a very effective way of blocking a bill, but it was only used very rarely until recent history. Since you need 60 votes to "pass a motion for cloture" meaning to end the debate, it now takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass a bill. In the current situation in the Senate, it means you have to have Republicans voting to end the debate, or the bill can never come up for a vote.
First, the President didn't just recently get the power to appoint federal officials, judges etc. It's always been part of his/her constitutional responsibilities.
You could start by reading my opening post, then you would not have to create your straw man argument. No one but you brought up the idea that this was something that only happened "recently". As I pointed out, these new powers to the executive branch have been building for many decades.
The rest of your post goes off on a tangent.
My point, which you did not address, was that we have given the executive branch too much power to tax, regulate, mandate and punish US citizens and control private enterprise, all without any need to consult congress before taking action on its own.
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