As I noted on Monday, the White House has begun posting the bills Congress sends down Pennsylvania Avenue so they can get a final public review. This was a promise President Obama made on the campaign trail.
The posting of bills actually began some time ago. I mistakenly believed that a promise administration officials made to the New York Timeshad been broken. But with no link trail leading from the Whitehouse.gov homepage to the posted bills, there was no way to find them. This was only technical sunlight, not the actual warming, disinfecting rays the president promised. So, sadly, we can’t put the many bills that got posted this way in the “win” column.
With a link on the homepage pointing to bills awaiting the president’s signature, a new era in Sunlight Before Signing is about to dawn. The White House’s current dismal SBS percentage (1 for 114, or .009) will be rising soon, and could ultimately be quite high!
Did the administration fail to execute on this simple promise from the beginning? Yes. But the good news is that we’re going to see implementation: average Americans will get a look at the bills that come to the president’s desk before he signs them, with an opportunity to say their piece.
That’s simple transparency, and as I’ve articulated elsewhere it will have salutary effects, reducing last-minute shenanigans in Congress.
Before we take a look at the full Sunlight Before Signing chart, here are some of the numbers:
- President Obama has signed 114 bills into law.
- Of those, 86, or 75%, have been held at the White House for five or more days as a matter of course. Simply posting them accessibly on Whitehouse.gov for comment would have fulfilled the president’s pledge.
- Forty-seven bills (41%) have been posted on Whitehouse.gov for five days, but without links leading visitors or search engines to them, they can’t be counted as fulfillments of the Sunlight Before Signing promise.
- One bill has been posted online for for five days, accessible to the public for their review, before receiving the president’s signature: The DTV Delay Act, Public Law 111–4.
Without further ado, the chart that lays out the Obama administration’s Sunlight Before Signing record so far:
* Page now gone.
† Bill was posted for five days after final passage, though not formal presentment.
‡ Link to final version of bill on impossible-to-find page.