Although the so-called “reconciliation bill” stripped out some of these abuses, they were only removed due to widespread public outrage—the politicians, who make deals like this all the time, were slow to realize the American people were paying close attention.
When asked about this extraordinary abuse of taxpayer dollars, Senate majority leader Harry Reid suggested senators who didn’t get a payoff were not doing their job. “I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that is important to them,” he said. “And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”
At some point in American history, a Senate majority leader may have made a bolder statement extolling corruption and vote-buying—but I’m unaware of it.
THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN CANDIDATE OBAMA AND PRESIDENT OBAMA
The lies and corruption of the Pelosi-Reid Congress are extraordinary, but they pale in comparison to the gaping disconnect between the promises of candidate Obama and the governing of President Obama.
Hidden beneath the pleasant campaign facade of Senator Obama was a ruthless willingness to replace “the audacity of hope” with “the audacity of raw, ruthless power.” He has brought the corrupt, Chicago-style politics he learned in his youth to the White House. Combined with Pelosi and Reid, Obama has created a powerful political machine in Washington unlike anything seen in my lifetime.
The creation of this machine was enabled by the elite media, which was so fawningly supportive of candidate Obama and so unwilling to dig into his past, render critical judgment, or ask critical questions, that the Obama team arrogantly came to believe it could break any promise and get away with it.
President Obama hides his duplicity behind secrecy, clever language, and legalisms. Like President Reagan, Obama possesses captivating, eloquent rhetorical gifts. While Reagan used rhetoric to clarify and educate, however, Obama uses his skills to confuse and deflect. These are profoundly different models of leadership. But then, clarity was Reagan’s ally, since he was a conservative who articulated the values of the American people. In contrast, as an apologist for the secular-socialist Left, Obama knows clarity is his opponent; the less the American people understand about what he’s doing, the better.
That’s why Obama’s most honest comments have been those when he went “off message.” In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle he said, “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” This was a striking, unscripted comment; Obama’s normal campaign rhetoric did not include promises to bankrupt our own coal industry.
And who can forget that at a private fundraiser in liberal San Francisco, Obama declared that small-town folk “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
These are two examples of Obama’s fundamental deception of the American people. While he promised a new dawn of abundant energy, he actually planned to declare war on the coal industry; and while he publicly praised the goodness of the American people, he really thinks we’re a bunch of angry, racist, gun-toting, religious extremists.
Perhaps more than anything else, Obama campaigned on the unshakeable vow to make Washington more transparent and accountable. Yet, after a full year of Obama’s presidency, Washington is more corrupt and secretive than ever. For example, major federal agencies have become much less cooperative with Freedom of Information Act requests. According to the Associated Press, the agencies cited legal exceptions to avoid disclosure more than 70,000 times during the first budget year of Obama’s presidency, compared to roughly 47,000 times during Bush’s last budget year.
It’s almost impossible to count this administration’s broken promises. What follows is merely a greatest hits compilation.
BIPARTISANSHIP
On election night, in a moving speech at Grant Park describing a reunified America, President-elect Obama said:
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House—a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends . . . though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn—I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.1
Tragically, President Obama promptly turned massive power over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, both of whom wrote legislation so stunningly partisan that virtually no Republicans have voted with them on any major bills.
The pork-filled, economically illiterate stimulus bill earned zero House Republican votes. Similarly, the first round of healthcare reform voting earned no Republican votes in the Senate and just one in the House. Then, instead of drafting a conference report that would have guaranteed at least some Republican input, the White House, Reid, and Pelosi decided to hammer out a final healthcare bill behind closed doors. Then, when Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts cost the Democrats their 60-vote Senate majority, they opted to ram the Senate bill through the House with no Republicans voting in favor. In fact, the only bipartisan position on the health bill was in opposition to it.
SECRET SIGNING STATEMENTS
We find more broken promises and deliberate obfuscations in President Obama’s policy on presidential signing statements.
Presidential signing statements have been used for more than 180 years by presidents of both parties, though they’ve been used more often since Ronald Reagan’s tenure. Some of these statements are merely symbolic declarations about the importance of the legislation being signed. But presidents also use signing statements to declare their intention to ignore certain parts of the legislation, or to interpret them a certain way, often because they believe those parts are unconstitutional or pose other problems. Their oath to uphold the constitution, presidents argue, requires them to do so.
Accusing then President Bush of abusing signing statements, candidate Obama pledged in a 2007 Boston Globe op-ed not to use them to “nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.” At a campaign rally, a citizen asked Obama, “When Congress offers you a bill do you promise not to use presidential signings to get your way?” He responded unequivocally, “Yes . . . we aren’t going to use signing statements as a way to do an end run around Congress.”
After taking office, however, President Obama suddenly became enamored with signing statements. In fact, in 2009 Obama used signing statements to object to specific legislative provisions seventeen times, one of which earned a 429-to-2 rebuke from Congress. Could there possibly be a more blatant example of Obama doing the exact “end run around Congress” that he’d vowed not to do?
President Obama stopped issuing these statements after some Democrats objected that he was breaking his campaign pledge. Promise salvaged?
Actually, no—it just got worse. According to a January 2010 New York Times article, the Obama administration still ignores parts of legislation they sign; they just stopped issuing signing statements announcing their intention to do so. Instead, the administration feels justified in ignoring objectionable provisions as long as they have previously expressed concern about them in a “statement of administration policy.” Thus, Americans no longer have any idea which provisions of a bill the administration will ignore or selectively enforce.
Furthermore, the article notes
President Obama has at least once relied on an opinion from his Office of Legal Counsel to justify treating a provision of a bill he’d signed as advisory, rather than binding. As the article points out, opinions from this office are often secret.
So what President Obama has done, effectively, is to create a precedent for secret signing statements.
Is this an end to the alleged abuse of presidential signing statements? Is this the transparency and accountability we were promised?
Hardly.
LOBBYING: BUSINESS AS USUAL
Initially, President Obama appeared serious about his famous pledge to toughen ethics rules to prevent the influence of lobbyists in his administration. The day after he took office, January 21, 2009, he signed an Executive Order barring industry lobbyists entering his administration from working on “regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”
The order, however, included a giant loophole, or “waiver,” that could nullify the rule if its application “is inconsistent” with its purpose, or if “it is in the public interest,” which “shall include, but not be limited to, exigent circumstances relating to national security or the economy.” Thanks to President Obama’s famous gift for language, nearly any appointee to any position could probably qualify for the waiver.
And indeed, just hours after signing the order, the president moved to nominate William J. Lynn III as deputy secretary of defense. For the six years prior to his nomination, Lynn was a registered lobbyist for Raytheon, a major defense contractor. As Senator Charles Grassley wrote to the president:
Mr. Lynn’s lobbying reports clearly indicate that he lobbied extensively on a very broad range of DOD programs and issues in both the House and Senate and at the Department of Defense. If confirmed, Mr. Lynn would become the top operations manager in the Pentagon. He would be the final approval authority on most—if not all—contract, program and budget decisions. Surely, a number of Raytheon issues would come across his desk. . . . Based upon President Obama’s statements made during the presidential campaign and leading up to and following the signing of the Executive Order, I simply cannot comprehend how this particular lobbyist could be nominated to fill such a key position at DOD overseeing procurement matters, much less be granted a waiver from the ethical limitations listed in the Executive Order.2
The administration cited Lynn’s superb qualifications to justify his ethics waiver. And indeed, Lynne had an extensive resume. In the 1980s, he worked for Senator Ted Kennedy on defense issues. Then, he worked on budgetary matters while serving in various roles in President Clinton’s Defense Department, becoming Clinton’s undersecretary of defense (comptroller) in 1997. After leaving the Clinton administration, Lynn became Raytheon’s executive vice president in 2002.
The problem with Lynn’s resume is that, rather than justifying Obama’s waiver, it undermines the rationale for it. Lynn’s career is a perfect illustration of the “revolving door” between government and lobbying that has led to so much corruption over the past decade. Lynn cashed in on his government service by using his contacts and expertise to give Raytheon an advantage in securing more government contracts and taxpayer money. Then, once he made lots of money, he returned to government service, bringing the biases and interests of his former employer.
President Obama has granted at least two other ethics waivers: one went to Jocelyn Frye, the director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady, who was previously a lobbyist for the National Partnership for Women and Families; and the other was given to Cecilia Muñoz, director of intergovernmental affairs in the Executive Office of the President, who previously lobbied for the National Council of La Raza.
Still, you might be tempted to cut President Obama a break. After all, he has appointed over 800 people and given only three waivers.
But it turns out there is another loophole within his Executive Order, a loophole within a loophole if you will: former lobbyists can simply agree to recuse themselves from matters related to their lobbying activities. Worse, there is no public record of these recusals, though the media has unearthed some examples.
Take Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Patterson was a lobbyist for investment giant Goldman Sachs. It’s simply impossible to imagine the chief of staff to the Treasury secretary recusing himself from every discussion involving Goldman, given the firm’s central role in the financial industry.
Thus, similar to the signing statements, once the president was criticized for breaking his word on the ban on lobbyists, he resorted to a secret process to hide his hypocrisy, this time, in effect, with secret waivers for former lobbyists.3
TERRORISTS’ LAWYERS IN THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Perhaps the most shocking example of the Obama administration’s lack of transparency is the case of the nine lawyers hired by the Department of Justice who had previously represented or advocated on behalf of terrorists.
These nine lawyers were among the over 400 members of the so-called “Gitmo Bar” who volunteered to represent terrorist detainees at Guantanamo. Most of the terrorists defended by these lawyers were alien enemy combatants challenging their detention, not defendants in a criminal trial, and thus they had no legal right to representation. Those few who were under trial for war crimes in a military commission were already entitled to competent military counsel. Nevertheless, the Gitmo Bar volunteered its services to the terrorists.
All these lawyers would undoubtedly deny having sympathy for al Qaeda, but the actions of some of them went far beyond simply challenging a detention policy they thought was unjust or unconstitutional. The most outrageous example was detailed in August 2009 in the Washington Post, which reported that lawyers representing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 conspirators worked with a left-wing organization called the John Adams Project to provide photographs of CIA officers to their clients in an attempt to identify those officers who had interrogated them when they were captured overseas. The lawyers were apparently unconcerned by the potential threat to our CIA officers and their families from being identified by name to al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists.
A Freedom of Information Act request filed by Debra Burlingame of Keep America Safe and Thomas Joscelyn of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies revealed other unconscionable acts by Gitmo Bar lawyers. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Burlingame and Joscelyn revealed that some lawyers provided their terrorist clients with extremely inflammatory anti-American literature for them to share with other inmates. One of these was an 18-page color brochure from Amnesty International accusing America and her allies of “anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.” Another document was the transcript of a speech comparing American military physicians at Guantanamo to the Nazi doctors of the concentration camps. One lawyer was even caught drawing a map of the detention camp for his client, including the location of guard towers; others posted photos of Guantanamo security badges on the Internet.
Given these appalling actions, it’s perfectly reasonable for the American people to want to know which lawyers hired by the Justice Department had previously represented terrorists, and if they are now setting security policy in the Obama administration. However, when senators asked Attorney General Eric Holder to identify those lawyers and their current roles in the Justice Department, he at first refused, and then dribbled out small bits of information. After several months, Keep America Safe began running ads demanding that he disclose the names of all the terrorists’ lawyers. The ensuing controversy led news organizations to finally uncover the names.
The revelations embarrassed the Obama administration. One of the lawyers now working in the Department of Justice’s security division is Jennifer Daskal, formerly of Human Rights Watch, who in 2006 campaigned for the UN Human Rights Committee to condemn the United States for its actions in the “so-called ‘war on terrorism.’ ” Daskal has also argued for closing Guantanamo and rel
easing those terrorists we cannot try in civilian courts, despite acknowledging “these men may . . . join the battlefield to fight U.S. soldiers and our allies another day.”
The Obama administration has the right to appoint anyone they want to fill spots at the Justice Department (assuming they can get Senate confirmation when needed) and to set policy as they see fit. But why the constant attempt at secrecy? If they want to appoint radicals and terrorist lawyers, why not just level with the American people about it?
The answer, of course, is that the American people would never accept what they’re doing.
TIME FOR REVIEWING LEGISLATION
There’s more.
On the very first bill he signed, President Obama broke his pledge to give the American people five days to review bills sent for his signature. According to a Washington Times analysis of data from the Library of Congress, President Obama failed to live up to his 5-day pledge on 32 of the 117 bills he signed in 2009. These included the 1,000-page, $787 billion stimulus package and the $400 billion omnibus spending bills for 2009 and 2010, enormous pieces of legislation filled with earmarks and political pay-offs.
Clearly, it’s difficult to competently debate legislation when no one has actually read it.
THEY LIE BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO
The record of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid team is clear. Contrary to their promises to clean up Washington, the president, House speaker, and Senate majority leader have governed with a political machine mentality that is more corrupt and secretive than anything we have seen in modern American politics.
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