Free To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich Page B

Obama’s presidency, Washington is more corrupt and secretive than ever. For example, major federal agencies have become much less cooperative with Freedom of Information Act requests. According to the Associated Press, the agencies cited legal exceptions to avoid disclosure more than 70,000 times during the first budget year of Obama’s presidency, compared to roughly 47,000 times during Bush’s last budget year.
    It’s almost impossible to count this administration’s broken promises. What follows is merely a greatest hits compilation.

BIPARTISANSHIP
    On election night, in a moving speech at Grant Park describing a reunified America, President-elect Obama said:
    Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House—a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends . . . though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn—I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too. 1
    Tragically, President Obama promptly turned massive power over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, both of whom wrote legislation so stunningly partisan that virtually no Republicans have voted with them on any major bills.
    The pork-filled, economically illiterate stimulus bill earned zero House Republican votes. Similarly, the first round of healthcare reform voting earned no Republican votes in the Senate and just one in the House. Then, instead of drafting a conference report that would have guaranteed at least some Republican input, the White House, Reid, and Pelosi decided to hammer out a final healthcare bill behind closed doors. Then, when Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts
cost the Democrats their 60-vote Senate majority, they opted to ram the Senate bill through the House with no Republicans voting in favor. In fact, the only bipartisan position on the health bill was in opposition to it.

SECRET SIGNING STATEMENTS
    We find more broken promises and deliberate obfuscations in President Obama’s policy on presidential signing statements.
    Presidential signing statements have been used for more than 180 years by presidents of both parties, though they’ve been used more often since Ronald Reagan’s tenure. Some of these statements are merely symbolic declarations about the importance of the legislation being signed. But presidents also use signing statements to declare their intention to ignore certain parts of the legislation, or to interpret them a certain way, often because they believe those parts are unconstitutional or pose other problems. Their oath to uphold the constitution, presidents argue, requires them to do so.
    Accusing then President Bush of abusing signing statements, candidate Obama pledged in a 2007 Boston Globe op-ed not to use them to “nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.” At a campaign rally, a citizen asked Obama, “When Congress offers you a bill do you promise not to use presidential signings to get your way?” He responded unequivocally, “Yes . . . we aren’t going to use signing statements as a way to do an end run around Congress.”
    After taking office, however, President Obama suddenly became enamored with signing statements. In fact, in 2009 Obama used signing statements to object to specific legislative provisions seventeen times, one of which earned a 429-to-2 rebuke from Congress. Could there