During the presidential campaign of last year, I never wanted nor looked forward to much of anything that candidate Obama promised or pledged to do when president.  However, nobody is all bad, even Obama.

One of his campaign pledges that I thought would be good was his promise to post bills on-line for 5 days before signing them.  This would give the people a chance to “know what your government was doing”. 

“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”.

However, President Obama broke that pledge with the first bill he signed.

Upon taking office, the new administration quickly changed that pledge by adding that non-emergency bills would be posted.  That seems fair, since if something were truly an emergency, waiting fie days could cause additional issues.  Now the administration is further changing the promise.  I saw today in the NYT, that now they will post bills when it appears that they will be headed to the president’s desk.

Posting the bills before they pass is an interesting proposal, but it leaves out close scrutiny as congress loves to slip extra pieces of legislation into a bill right before votes.  Case in point, everybody in congress was outraged by AIG bonuses even though they all voted for it thanks to Chris Dodd slipping in the language to protect the AIG bonuses.

Once again Americans are reminded that promises made aren’t necesserarliy promisses kept.  We can see now that as the president moves forward with running the country, those that voted for him are left with little hope for change.