Not sure if this is GD worthy or more of a GQ question, I suppose a couple days doesn’t make that big a difference in the grand scheme of things, the stimulus is going to take months to implement. But I remember during the Terri Schiavo debacle George W. Bush made a big deal out of flying out to Washington DC late at night from wherever he was at to sign the bill to give Schiavos parents a crack at saving Terri. If one vegetative unconcious person is worthy of this much expediency, surely our ailing economy could use this kind of haste also. Why not just sign the stimulus bill now, considering it takes a matter of seconds to put ink to paper?
Obama did promise to post pending legislation on the White House website for 5 days to allow for comments before signing.
It was posted on Friday, Tuesday would be five days.
For one thing, it actually takes some time to print bills that go to the White House.
The paper that is delivered to the House and the Senate is not the exact same thing as what is sent to the White House. The identical bill passed by both houses first has to be printed on special paper, rechecked against the version voted on for accuracy, and then has to be given to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate (though generally this means the President Pro Tempore) for their signature, then it is sent to the Oval Office. This may be a trivial matter for a one page bill for Terri Shiavo, but not necessarily for assembling and double-checking a bill that’s god-knows how many hundreds of pages.
And you can’t expect government employees to work on a holiday weekend, right? 
Four posts in and no suggestion of treachery afoot. That’s nice.
Who is this “guest” pretending to be elucidator? Treachery!!!
Seriously, thanks for the explanations, pat & Raven. This seems respectable.
It seems to me that it is a little late for comments. Perhaps waiting five days so the senators could have a chance to read the bill would have made more sense. It looks like Obama and Co. were much more interested in getting the bill PASSED as opposed to getting it signed…we will need sufficient time to set up the photo-op.
I had been offered a position with the SDMB Metaphysics Advisory Board, but the nomination was blocked by renegade Theosophers.
Do you make your mother cook for the family on Mother’s Day? How about your dad? Do you make him mow the lawn and clean out the garage on Father’s Day?
Well, it’s President’s Day today. That’s HIS day. He can put his feet up today and sign the bill tomorrow.
kaylasdad99, I’m glad that the office is almost deserted today, because if it weren’t, there’d be a lot of people wondering why I just burst out laughing.
(sigh) What was said by others (editing and printing it, having it up for review) PLUS there was an intervening weekend and a national holiday.
The press corps is thick on the ground in the White House. A photo op can be set up in five minutes. :rolleyes:
Absolutely. 18 days is a long time to go without a break. That’s almost 3 weeks.
The signals of urgency were a little mixed. on the 5th he sent an op letter to the Washington Post where he said: **Each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. ** The same day at a speech given at the Department of Energy he said **“The time for talk is over. The time for action is now.” **
The driving force was spelled out in his Prime-Time Press Briefing earlier that week:
**Most economists, almost unanimously, recognize that even if philosophically you’re – you’re wary of government intervening in the economy, when you have the kind of problem we have right now – what started on Wall Street goes to Main Street, suddenly businesses can’t get credit, they start paring back their investment, they start laying off workers, workers start pulling back in terms of spending – that when you have that situation, that government is an important element of introducing some additional demand into the economy. We stand to lose about $1 trillion worth of demand this year and another trillion next year, and what that means is you’ve got this gaping hole in the economy.
That’s why the – the figure that we initially came up with, of approximately $800 billion, was put forward. That wasn’t just some random number that I plucked out of – out of a hat. That was Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal economists that I spoke to, who indicated that given the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that it’s happening worldwide, it’s important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs. That still means that you’re going to have some net job loss, but at least we can start slowing the trend and moving it in the right direction. **
Message to his disciples: go forth with this basket of debt and multiply it.
From what he has said and what Congress passed, it didn’t matter what was in the bill, only that $800 Billion was spent and spent quickly. No need to read it. The result was was one HUGE pork barrel project with no set goal beyond indebted spending.
I think his chief of staff summed it up nicely: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity”. Rahm Emanuel
Not a photo op in Denver…takes time. I know the bill was delivered yesterday, probably while Obama was shooting hoops. Look, I don’t care when he signs the damn thing but perception is everything in politics. If Bush had taken a leisure trip instead of signing the bill that would save the country the press would have been all over him.
To me, it seems like a “color of the bikeshed” issue. Congress and the President can be seen Rushing Into Action, in order to show that they are Doing Something about the Big Issues of the Day, in something like the Schiavo case. They’re basically just being overdramatic blowhards. But something like the stimulus package which is actually important (in at least the sense of being very expensive and extremely far-reaching, regardless of one’s opinion on the merits), rushing around like a chicken sans head is stupid. Plus Obama actually like, thinks about stuff (or at least tries to give that appearance), whereas Bush was a more “shoot from the gut” kinda guy (or at least tried to give that appearance).
Thing is, Obama has two options here: Sign or Veto. There’s no need for any extra deliberation, really. Congress already did the deliberating. I don’t see any need to dilly dally for a minute longer than neccesary. People are losing their jobs every day, and even if it’s going to take a long time to get these programs geared up, I’d rather they be geared up two days sooner if that’s at all possible.
What earthly purpose would allowing a few days for “comments” have served? It’s not as though anyone is going to read the comments and then call for a revote, so what was the point? I guess it’s an empty feel-good measure, but wasn’t the world as we know it supposed to end if time was wasted reading it before voting?
Obviously Obama listens to Rush at the very least, probably Beck and O’Rielly etc too. Not signing on Presidents’ day is a way to “Nuh Uh!” the talking heads’ assertion that he only forced everyone to rush through the process so he could egotistically link his all-important signing of the almighty bill to Presidents’ day.
I didn’t need 2 days to comment. Hey Mr President, you look just as pretty in front of a DC camera as you do a DEN camera. Stop driving AF1 around like it runs on sunshine or your ego because the little people you’re flying over have to PAY for that global warming freakshow. It’s not a contest between you and Al Gore to see who can burn the most jet fuel. I mean seriously, you had to fly to frickin Denver to sign a sheet of paper? Just because you can afford a $170 million dollar coronation in the middle of a financial crisis doesn’t mean we can afford your extravagant life style. Put your crown back on and see if you can make it 4 weeks without a vacation.