Thread: Barack Obama prepares to reverse hundreds of Bush directives

Barack Obama prepares to reverse hundreds of Bush directives

Barack Obama is preparing to overturn hundreds of rules and regulations on stem cell research, climate change and birth control introduced by the man he will replace in ten weeks.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 2:16PM GMT 10 Nov 2008

Video at the link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... tives.html

Mr Obama is to meet Mr Bush at the White House on Monday. The visit will include a tour of the residence for his wife Michelle conducted by First Lady Laura Bush, and forms part of what Obama aides described as a "collegiate" transition of power.

Despite his fierce criticism of the Bush administration during the campaign, Mr Obama and his advisers are being treated with full cooperation as the handover gets properly underway.

John Podesta, head of the victorious Democrat's transition team, said White House staff were "being very forthcoming". "We are moving in a very professional way," he said on CBS' Face the Nation.

In his weekly radio address Mr Bush, who has fully embraced the historic nature of Mr Obama's election last week as the first African American president, said that a smooth handover was paramount.

"I told him [Mr Obama] that he can count on my complete cooperation," he said. "Ensuring that this transition is seamless is a top priority for the rest of my time in office."

Mr Podesta, who is heading the president-elect's transition team, said that the incoming administration was reviewing Bush's executive orders on stem cell research, oil and gas drilling, and other matters.

He told Fox television that the idea was to use executive orders to move quickly without waiting for Congress to act.

"I'm not going to preview decisions that he has yet to make. But I would say that as a candidate, Senator Obama said that he wanted all the Bush executive orders reviewed, and decide which ones should be kept, and which ones should be repealed, and which ones should be amended. And that process is going on. It's been undertaken," said Mr Podesta, who was chief of staff under President Bill Clinton.

"There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action," he added.

Other aides said probable early targets for reforms would be regulations regarded as overtly political. During the campaign Mr Obama indicated that we wanted to end limits on stem cell research, which the scientific community has claimed has hampered the effort to combat a range of diseases.

He may lift a ban that prevents international family planning organisations that receive US government aid advising women about the possibility of abortion and in some cases discouraging common contraceptive methods.

Last year the Bush administration denied California the authority to limit carbon emissions from vehicles. During the campaign Mr Obama stated his belief that the country's biggest state should have the power to do so.

A friend of the Obamas yesterday affirmed that Michelle will not seek a Hillary Clinton-style role at her husband's decision-making table.

Valerie Jarrett, a co-chair of the transition team, said that she initially be focused on settling in her two daughters.

Then, Mrs Jarrett said, the next first lady would want to help women juggle a career and motherhood, assist military spouses and promote volunteerism.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... tives.html

Obama plans review of Bush executive orders

Associated Press

CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama is poised to move swiftly to reverse actions that President Bush took using executive authority, and his transition team is reviewing limits on stem-cell research and the expansion of oil and gas drilling, among other issues, members of the team said Sunday.

While Obama prepared to make his first post-election visit to the White House today, his advisers were compiling a list of policies that could be reversed by the executive powers of the new president. The assessment is under way, aides said, but a full list of policies to be overturned will not be announced by Obama until he confers with new members of his cabinet.

"There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that," John Podesta, a top transition leader, said Sunday. "He feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set."

Throughout his presidency, Bush has made liberal use of his executive authority, using it to put his stamp on a range of hot-button policy issues.

On Sunday, in a sign that the presidential campaign had definitively ended and that the fast-forming administration was suddenly the focal point, the faces of Obama's new team appeared across the spectrum of Sunday talk shows, a changing of the guard more than two months before he officially assumes power.

Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said that the federal government should provide aid to the automobile industry to help the major automakers and their suppliers survive the financial crisis. General Motors, the largest American automaker, said last week that it has been losing more than $2 billion a month from its cash cushion recently and could face bankruptcy.

Emanuel told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the industry was "an essential part of the economy," echoing remarks that Obama made at his first post-election news conference last week.

Podesta, who for months has been planning for the transition, said in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" that Obama was considering Democrats, Republicans and independents for key Cabinet positions. While previous presidents have not announced such appointments until December, he suggested that officials tasked with the economy, national security, health care and energy portfolios could be named sooner.

"I think he intends to move very quickly," Podesta said. "And you know, he's beaten a lot of records during the course of the campaign."

Obama does not intend to name any Cabinet officials this week, aides said Sunday, but is poised to announce additional White House senior staff decisions as early as Tuesday as he works to begin building his administration from the Oval Office to other positions inside the West Wing and other parts of the government.

The executive orders of the Bush administration are among the many items that are being reviewed by the new Obama team. The transition operation that was set up in August, even before Obama was formally nominated at the Democratic convention, included a plan to scrutinize the policies that could be reversed through the power of an executive order of the new president.

The federal Bureau of Land Management is poised to open about 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas drilling, a plan that the Bush administration has argued would not harm the land. Environmentalists have opposed the idea, a sentiment echoed by Podesta on Sunday.

"I think across the board, on stem-cell research, on a number of areas, you see the Bush administration even today moving aggressively to do things that I think are probably not in the interest of the country," Podesta said on "Fox News Sunday." "They want to have oil and gas drilling in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah that they're going to try to do right as they are walking out the door. I think that's a mistake."

Emanuel said that Congress needed to extend unemployment insurance benefits and offer states a lift in paying for health care bills. When the new Democratic Congress convenes in January, he said, they should tackle a wider economic stimulus package that includes the middle-class tax cut that was a centerpiece of Obama's presidential campaign.

"You cannot have a strong and resilient economy that does not have a strong and resilient middle class," Emanuel said on ABC News' "This Week." "They have been squeezed over the last number of years, and it is essential to have an economic strategy that strengthens them going forward."

Emanuel also said an economic stimulus package in Congress should not be linked to a free-trade agreement with Colombia, as some Republicans have sought to do. Democrats have resisted those efforts, saying it does not provide enough labor protection.

President Bush used his first prime-time address, on August 9, 2001, to announce his decision (technically a policy pronouncement and not an executive order) to permit federal funding for human embryonic stem-cell research, albeit with strict limitations. Scientists and patient advocates have spent years pressing him to loosen the restrictions; Bush has twice vetoed legislation that would do so.

"It will have been eight years that we have been operating in a limited funding environment," said Larry Soler, a board member of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, an umbrella group representing 100 organizations. "I think everyone in the scientific community and the patient community is geared up and expecting this and excited to make this happen. It's been a long struggle."

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_10943042

I swear this man hates babies.

Originally Posted by SicNTiredInSoCal

I swear this man hates babies.

He only hates American babies, for illegal aliens he wants to pay them more to have more babies.