What do people make of this WSJ article on Obama's signing statement. Kerry in the story, too.

[beachmom]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124761651200542351.html

Obama's Fiats Anger Lawmakers

With $108 billion in International Monetary Fund loan guarantees in jeopardy last month, White House economic officials begged, cajoled and cut deals with Democrats to secure passage of legislation boosting the fund's power. Days later, President Barack Obama announced he wasn't bound by any of the agreements.

The ensuing flap over the president's June 24 signing statement is the latest in a series of clashes between the White House and Congress over an issue Mr. Obama once fought against himself: presidential fiat.

...

"Of course there's a broader issue here," said House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.), referring to the brewing battles with Mr. Obama over presidential prerogative. "It's outrageous. It's exactly what the Bush people did."

A White House official said the signing statement was issued "out of an abundance of caution" to preserve "core presidential prerogatives" in the area of foreign policy. ...

If you recall the IMF agreement was made at the G20 summit. It was viewed as a coup by Obama (an economist I respect whose name escapes me praised the deal). But Republicans balked because they said it was "bailing out international bankers". Um, no. But regardless, Obama needed Democrats to get it passed. Apparently, one wrinkle in negotiations with some Jewish Democrats was that no money went to Iran.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D., Mass.) and ranking committee Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana said they wanted more transparency from, and oversight over, the World Bank and IMF. Mr. Frank, bargaining for a group of House liberals, wanted assurances that the lenders wouldn't demand that poor governments cut education, environmental and other social programs as a prerequisite to getting emergency loans.

Mr. Frank said his talks with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner couldn't be described as negotiations. Mr. Geithner, he said, was begging. He said Treasury assurances that it would accept these restrictions persuaded him to switch his vote, and that he, in turn, won over several other Democrats.

Mr. Kerry's account was similar, saying for the past several months, he had worked with the Senate and Treasury "to encourage financial institutions such as the IMF to become more transparent and accountable."

Mr. Obama's signing statement said the IMF and World Bank provisions "would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations."

I think this one is a tough call. Although Congress was right about their misgivings, I am not sure America can dictate what the IMF and World Bank do. As to signing statements, they have always been around. The problem was Bush used them an unprecedented amount of times. It is too early to tell if Obama misuses them.

What do others make of this? (Read the whole article, of course)

[TayTay]

1. I think this is related to the story about HRC at State and her influence

This was a part of the WaPo column about the tight message control around the President:

The fact is this is a cohesive administration. Jones and Clinton respect each other and understand each other's roles. Even though they were not part of Obama's campaign team, they have adapted quickly to his rigorous style of managed communication, which is policed by an inner circle of Obama intimates: Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and Denis McDonough, who are the most influential message commissars at the White House.

That circle decides who gets interviewed on national television, when and pretty much what they say (not very successfully in the case of Vice President Biden, but nobody's perfect). It was no accident that Clinton did not appear on a Sunday television talk show until June 7 -- almost five months into the administration -- when the secretary of state was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week."

Convinced that Obama is a unique American communicator, the White House did not want anyone else diluting his aura as spokesman to the world. And, surprise, surprise, this approach maximizes the close-in advisers' clout.

Their first-among-equals standing is also on display in quiet ways during the president's frequent overseas travels and leadership meetings, such as his trips to Russia and the Group of 8 summit in Italy last week. Officials abroad are struck by Obama's reflexive reliance on Emanuel, his chief of staff, even on foreign policy issues in these meetings. And one diplomat was surprised to learn that Axelrod, Obama's top political adviser, had been thoroughly briefed by Obama after a one-on-one meeting with the diplomat's president before Jones or Clinton were.

The House put the restrictions BACK into the IMF funds by a vote of 429-2. Ah, that is no cliff-hanger vote. I think that Rahm Emmanuel had better stop trying to emulate H.R. Haldeman's tenure at the White House and deal with others as both adults and independent operators with their own Consitutional mandates to operate.

For the Nixon/Watergate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Haldeman#Career_in_the_Nixon_administration">memory-impaired:

He and Ehrlichman were called "the Berlin Wall" by other White House staffers in a play on their German-American backgrounds and shared penchant for keeping others away from Nixon and serving as his "gatekeepers." They became Nixon's most loyal and trusted aides during his presidency. Both were ruthlessin protecting what they regarded as Nixon's best interests. Haldeman once said he was proud to be "Richard Nixon's son of a bitch", as he never shied away from firing staffers in person.

Seriously, the Nixon White House and H.R. Haldeman are not proper role models. Neither a Democratic President or his CoS should be looking back on that for a reference. That is how to ruin a Presidency.

This President is too cloistered. This totally avoidable flap is symptom, not yet problem, but a very worrisome symptom. This is not the first Presidential Signing Statement for Obama. He is not doing what he said he would in terms of running a transparent and constitutional presidency. (Neither is the Republic in danger yet. But this is not good.)

BTW, the President will probably lose a fight over the F-22 funding. Why would any legislator feel bad about taking him on about this? After all, the President doesn't feel a thing about arbitrarily overriding Congress, as this article shows.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Rahm needs to learn that.

[beachmom]

2. I am with you on the balance of power issue. But I also think Congress

sometimes throws things in that simply are not workable on an international body like the IMF and the World Bank.

Thanks for the history lesson on the Nixon White House.

[TayTay]

3. This is not the first signing statement for the President.

There are genuine and legitimate tensions between the executive and legislative branches of the government over power and control. These tensions help compose the system of checks and balances that are meant to be a protection against an overwhelming hold of power by one branch over the others.

Signing statements, in and of themselves, are simply an "explanation" by the Executive Branch of their understanding of how a law is to be implemented. That is indeed their right to issue these understandings and to clarify how they will instruct the various agencies of the government to implement the law.

What deeply concerns me and sets my alarm bells to ringing are the signing statements that unilaterally discard the legally passed legislation of the US Congress. I like President Obama and support him. But I do not support any Chief Executive who is doing an arrogant power grab and asserting executive prerogative over legislation and particularly not the power to negate laws of Congress duly enacted and signed. That is exactly how we wind up with Dick Cheney's who form their own CIA hit squads and decide not to tell any other branch of the government.

My loyalty is to the rule of law and the Constitution. Nothing and no one tops that, not man, woman or Party. And these arrogant dismissals of "deals" with the Congress that are made and then airily discarded because they no longer felt like they should do them is very worrisome.

Arrogance is the enemy of people in power. It is responsible for a lot of very bad things that have happened in the country. I do not want to see the Obama Administration go off and engage in dismissive and condescending behavior with the Congress and then act all surprised when the Congress asserts it's Constitutional rights as a co-equal branch of government. That is a totally avoidable situation. A fight of that kind would be bad for this country as well.

I know that Rahm Emmanuel used to work for the Clintons and is considered their friend. However, I do not trust that man. I think he is arrogant and picks unnecessary fights and is perfectly willing to engage in a destructive "pissing contest" just because he can. Not a good thing and it bears watching in my book.

[beachmom]

5. We knew Bush opened a can of worms that would not easily go back in.

People TRIED to warn Republicans that this kind of power would not go away, and that a Democrat could wield it just as easily. BUT, we are in a situation where we have a stacked VERY conservative Supreme Court which is going to side with executive power more often than not. And it will be that way for the next 30 years at least.

Going back to your boredom with the Sotomayor hearings: the reason it is dullsville is because she is replacing Souter (who possibly may lean more "liberal" than she does), which will not affect the Court whatsoever. Maybe it was "bad politics" but I am glad John Kerry fought the Alito nomination. Really bad decisions are going to be made in the Court for years to come which will aid and abett the troubling actions of the executive branch.

[wisteria]

4. These are very worrisome moves on the part of this administration.

President Obama made many promises when he was running, but the one that demonstrated his willingness to be open and honest with the American public was him saying his presidency would be transparent and would follow the Constitution. I hope the president remembers how important it is to the American public that he honor this promise.

[sandnsea]

6. Signing Statements, flap about next to nothing

at this point. I also think people are really misreading Obama and the way he runs his White House. He isn't remotely cloistered, never will be. He does, however, believe in message control and is 100% in charge of the message. He just doles it out at a little slower pace than what the 24 hour news junkie would prefer.

There have been 7 signing statements.
Omnibus
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900145/pdf/DCPD-200900145.pdf
The Omnibus bill is the only one with a signing statement of any concern, imo. One of them goes to the same kind of foreign affairs as the supplemental did, another to an issue of executive privilege, and a couple of others with budget and funding that appear to give the President authority he doesn’t have, which is what he stated. The only one that really concerns me is the Peacekeeping Missions because it appears that funding has been withheld and I don’t think Obama has the Constitutional authority to override Congress when it withdraws funding. But I don’t think I’ve heard much on that one.

The rest are either rhetorical or staking out already clear law. It’s clear Congress doesn’t have the right to demand who a Secretary appoints, or to direct the White House to furnish every speck of data on any inquiry, or to override the President’s Constitutional duties in foreign affairs, treaties, etc.

Stimulus
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900088/pdf/DCPD-200900088.pdf
Rhetorical

Public Land Omnibus
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900201/pdf/DCPD-200900201.pdf
Section 8203 says Secretary of the Interior shall appoint members of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Commission. That is a restriction on the power of the Secretary so Obama changed it to “congressional recommendations, but not to be bound by them in making appointments to the Commission.”

Fraud & Recovery Act
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900387/pdf/DCPD-200900387.pdf
“Section 5(d) of the Act requires every department, agency, bureau, board, commission,
office, independent establishment, or instrumentality of the United States to furnish to the
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a legislative entity, any information related to any
Commission inquiry. As my Administration communicated to the Congress during the legislative process, the executive branch will construe this subsection of the bill not to abrogate
any constitutional privilege.”

Reagan Commission
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900424/pdf/DCPD-200900424.pdf
Limits Congressional participation

Supplemental (2)
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900512/pdf/DCPD-200900512.pdf
However, provisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403
and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign
relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with
international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the
Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting
my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-200900501/pdf/DCPD-200900501.pdf
Thanks Congress