House Overwhelmingly Rejects Obama Signing Statement

The Hill:

The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.

House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.

Read the whole story: The Hill

Comments

[wijg]

Good for Congress! It only took them 6 months to grow a backbone.

[naschkatze]

Obama signed on to the entire bill period. I would think he would have a difficult case in court proving otherwise.

[BabblingBrooks]

*

Did you hear Obama's riff on South Korea versus Kenya, why one prospered and the other did not? Not once did he mention economic freedom, business freedom, honesty and integrity in government, democratic rule. No, it was all about how the South Korean government accomplished it all.

It wasn't government that accomplished it, but the South Korean people free from overbearing regulation that accomplished the South Korean economic boom.

He just never will get it. Too bad we don't have a parliamentary systerm wherein he could receive a no-confidence vote and be gone before 2012...

[MacDad]

in BO's mind the state trumps the individual, we are always a gov't program away from correcting a wrong or fixing a problem...­BO is a stat.ist/f­as.cist - state control for the public good (as he defines it)... "never waste a good criss"...

[mairs]

As opposed to Bush.... corporate control for the corporate good.

[edmond dantes]

MacDad, you really do not seem to understand much about Korea's economic model. South Korea enjoyed rapid economic growth from the 60s to the 90s because of smart regulation. The government played an enormous role in protecting and supporting the growth of the chaebols, while maintaining tight restrictions on the flow of capital and carefully managing its exchange rate in order to enable export-led economic growth. Only after Korea succumbed to intense pressure from the US Treasury to liberalize its capital markets did the nation suffer a massive financial crisis in the late 1990s. No informed economist would ever trumpet Korea as a bastion of free market economics.

[nellie]

Wow, what gibberish. Obama's work as a community organizer was all about individuals, helping people

It's amazing how so many words can be used to express something so unrealistic.

[mairs]

So how did ending regulation work out for you in the financial industry? How does your portfolio look today, if you have one? Bush got it really well, Obama doesn't "get it" that those at the top need to be unfettered so they can fleece us even more.

[MacDad]

i suposse you are referring the ending of regulation by the clinton admin? my portfolio is down 25%, big deal, that is life - not looking for a bailout...­. those "at the top" that you refer to create the jobs for "us"...

[jmc42]

And to think that I voted for this prez based on his pack of lies.

What a shill for more Bush, neocon, bilderberg, bankers, wall street and class warfare.

[CitizenRob]

Maybe it's time to be down with the Dem party all together.

[naschkatze]

Food for some serious thought.

[LREKing]

I don't think you did vote for him.

[Okieborn]

Hmmmm!!!
Mr. President it would seem the honey moon is over !!!

[rizvisa1]

I am glad that was done. But at the same time how wonderful to know that all of sudden both democrats and republicans realized that oh that signing statement is not right. When Biush was doing it, few had balls to open their mouth. At that time nothing Bush was doing was wrong in Republicans eyes and democrats were at their usual spineless.

[RJII]

luv how it was OK for Bush, but not Obama.

[dave1111]

Bush actually put that in a signing statement. It read, "Ok for me, not for Obama."

[naschkatze]

Put another way: why was it wrong for Bush but o.k. for Obama?

[CitizenRob]

Nobody is arguing it is okay for Obama.

[nellie]

No, the question is, why wasn't it wrong for Bush, because it's not okay for Obama.

[MacDad]

didn't candidate BO denouce the use of such staments? one more way that candidate BO would never support prez BO... or said another way, another instance in which the rhetoric of the campaign flies in the face of actually governing.­.. or said another way, BO lied...

[SCG]

He did denounce Bush's excessive use of the signing statement, but he never totally ruled out using it.

But he did promise the voters in Ohio, that he'd revisit NAFTA , "strengthen labor and environmental standards "

[jumperpin]

I voted/worked for Obama.

But this guy needs to get his ass home...and 'splain his f'in problem w/ FAIR trade !!

[jtmoney]

signing statements, like line item vetos, should be outlawed. either vote on a bill based on its merits or veto the thing. otherwise, if a president is just making up his own laws. it's very undemocratic.

[Gover]

But this is how we end up with "super bills" where some hand-guns-­in-nationa­l-parks gets inserted into a Bill about credit cards.

What there needs to be is a law preventing people from tacking on unrelated garbage onto every Bill.

Vote the thing on it's merits, not because you hate it but love this amendment they tacked on to get your vote.

[celticjag]

As a Constitutional Law professor, the President should know better, then again maybe he does! He has already issued six of these nefarious statements. There is no basis in either the Constitution or any Federal Law that gives this power to the President. A commentater stated earlier that this is an end run around the Constitution and he/she is correct. I wonder if Congress could pass a law prohibiting signing statements and then let the SCOTUS decide on its Constitutionality?

[sassy14u2]

Good -- I only wish they had done the same with Bush

[SCG]

Sad, when the congress has to be the backbone of the executive's campaign promises.

[naschkatze]

But Congress is an equal partner in the government so I am glad to see them assert themselves.

[cdub1991]

This has less to do with Obama per se then with the entire concept of the imperial presidency that has grown unabated. I'm an unabashed supporter of Obama, but I say well done Congress. It's time to start reigning in the Executive branch.

[Rule Of Law]

Cheney is on record as saying that he knew Obama would have a hard time walking away from the expansion of executive power that he and Bush put in place.

Looks like he was right!

[LaurieAnn]

-Cosign.

[dave1111]

Obama rejects Congress's rejection, with another signing statement.

[socks1]

Then he looses the funding for the occupations.