Obama ducks promise to delay bill signings

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By Stephen Dinan

It seemed among the easiest of his transparency pledges and is entirely under his control, but President Obama is finagling his promise to post bills on the White House Web site for comment for five days before he signs them.

Mr. Obama last week signed four bills, each just a day or two after Congress passed and sent it over to him.

The White House said it posted links from its Web site to Congress' legislative Web site about a week before Mr. Obama signed the measures, but transparency advocates say that doesn't match the president's pledge to give Americans time to comment on the final version he is about to sign.

"He didn't say, 'When there's a bill heading to my desk,' or 'When we're pretty sure a bill will soon be passed.' He said when a bill ends up on his desk - a strong implication that public review would follow the bill arriving at his desk," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute.

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During the campaign and again during the transition, Mr. Obama said opening bills up for public comment was a way of fighting back against special interests' control of the process.

"When there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing," Mr. Obama said in a major campaign speech laying out his goals for transparency.

Mr. Harper said that to him, the pledge means putting a copy of the bill on www.whitehouse.gov and then waiting five days to allow comments to roll in.

"That's the only interpretation of this promise that delivers solid transparency," he said. "Posting a bill late in the process doesn't give the public a chance to review the final legislation - especially last-minute amendments, which are where a lot of congressional hijinks happen."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the clock starts ticking when a link is posted to bills when they are in their final version, such as a conference report, even if they haven't passed Congress.