Update on Obama’s Pledged Legislative Transparency

Patrick Ruffini draws attention to President Obama’s election pledge to shed some light on the legislative process.

He notes that:

During the campaign, Barack Obama promised to post all non-emergency legislation on the White House website for public comment:  “Sunlight Before Signing: Too often
bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the
public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not
sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an
opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five
days.”

To date, this has not been done with the handful of bills that have made their way to the President for his signature. The Republican leadership has attempted to use this pledge as leverage with the White House in the stimulus negotiations, to no avail.

Apparently the White House Communications shop was getting enough questions on the topic that they quietly posted an update on the White House blog on Friday afternoon:

This policy will be implemented in full soon; currently we are working
through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the
congressional calendar.

It isn’t clear precisely what the “implementation” issues might be as they clearly have figured out how to post text to the White House web site and presumably have access to the text of the legislation that the President will sign.

A cynic might think that the “congressional calendar” issues referenced simply refer to the White House’s desire to get certain legislation enacted on a schedule most suited to public relations and coalition relations and didn’t realize during the campaign how that 5 day waiting period might impact the traditional Oval Office dog and pony show.