Obama, during his speech on national security last week:
"I ran for President promising transparency, and I meant what I said."
But on the easiest transparency pledge he made, the president has fallen consistently short. Here is yet another newspaper story on his failure to post bills on WhiteHouse.gov five days before he signs them:
Mr. Obama last week signed four bills, each just a day or two after Congress passed and sent it over to him.
The White House said it posted links from its Web site to Congress' legislative Web site about a week before Mr. Obama signed the measures, but transparency advocates say that doesn't match the president's pledge to give Americans time to comment on the final version he is about to sign.
"He didn't say, 'When there's a bill heading to my desk,' or 'When we're pretty sure a bill will soon be passed.' He said when a bill ends up on his desk - a strong implication that public review would follow the bill arriving at his desk," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Here's what he actually said on the trail:
"When there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing," Mr. Obama said in a major campaign speech laying out his goals for transparency.
Robert Gibbs has massaged the meaning of this statement (and by "massaged," I mean "made up a new promise out of whole cloth"), and now says the five-day clock starts ticking when the White House links to a bill in its final form from the White House web site.
"A conference report, as you know, is an unamendable piece of legislation that has to be approved by both houses, language has to be simultaneous, it gets sent down here, and we sign it," he told reporters Friday.
If one is a passionate advocate of transparency, enthusiastic about the public giving its take on legislation, as Obama claims to be, why is he relying on the public's knowledge of "conference reports," Thomas.loc.gov, and the contents thereof to jump-start active citizenship? It's enough to make you wonder whether he actually wants the public getting a look at these bills.
But even by the generous standard Gibbs has made up, the Obama White House didn't even come close:
In the case of a Defense Department weapons acquisition bill, the White House posted its link to the Library of Congress Web site, www.Thomas.gov, on May 14, even though the conference report wasn't done until May 20. Congress passed that bill on May 21 and Mr. Obama signed it the next day.
On the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights Act, the White House posted a link to Congress on May 14, but the Senate didn't finish its work until May 19; the House agreed to the Senate's version on May 20, and Mr. Obama signed it two days later.
H/t The Anchoress, for the headline.
You see, when he committed himself during the campaign to cleaning up Washington and being open and transpar...HEY LOOK OVER THERE! IT'S SOMETHING HOPEY-CHANGEY!!!
[Whew! That was a close one. Send the Kool-Aid around again...the effects are wearing off...]
There's my two cents.
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