Five Days
The “Cash for Clunkers” program, which spent all of the $1,000,000,000 allocated for it after just one week, has been extended. The House passed the extension earlier this week, the Senate approved it on Thursday night, and President Obama signed the bill into law on Friday morning.
Hang on. I’m starting to remember something…
Candidate Obama promised that, once a bill was passed by Congress, it would be posted online to be reviewed for five days before he signed it. When it became obvious that he had absolutely no intention of actually following through on that pledge, he changed the terms, saying that he would allow five days from the point that it became clear that the bill was going to come across his desk[a].
On Thursday, July 30th, the administration told us that money was running out and that the program would be suspended as of midnight Thursday. The House passed HR-3435 on July 31st, 2009, one week before the President signed the bill. It then went to the Senate, where it was, ultimately, passed without amendment, though six different amendments were proposed on July 6th.
Even under the President’s “revised” promise[b], there is no way he could’ve known what was heading to his desk before July 6th, because there were still debates going on about amendments. Yet, he signed the bill less than 24 hours after it was passed.
I guess promises mean something different in Chicago than they do here in West Virginia.
- I’m going to ignore, for the moment, the fact that the change means that the bill could be changed during the five days it was up for review, making the alteration of the pledge pretty silly. As the linked article points out, the pledge itself meant that the public could comment when it was too late to change the bill anyway; was he promising to veto everything that he got too much bad feedback on? [↩]
- That is a trick I’m going to have to try. “I promise that if we have Mexican food tonight, then we can go to Taste of Asia tomorrow.” “Well, I’m not going to keep that first promise, because I’m a liar it’s just too hard to keep, but now I promise that if we have Mexican food tonight, you can get take-out Chinese food tomorrow.” [↩]