Sunlight Before Signing, Year Three

by on January 25, 2012 · 2 comments

President Obama’s third full year in office came to an end last week, and I’ve reviewed how well he’s doing with one particular campaign promise on the Cato@LIberty blog. “Sunlight Before Signing” is the moniker for the president’s campaign promise to post online the bills Congress sends him for five days before signing them.

As we start the fourth year, he’s at just over 50% on fulfillment of the promise. Far less if you measure based on the number of pages that got the sunlight he promised.

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About Jim Harper

Jim Harper is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. A Poli Sci major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jim served as Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in his final year at Hastings College of the Law. Prior to becoming a policy analyst and advocate, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. He avoids genuine life experience by watching lots and lots of reality TV.

Read more articles by Jim Harper.

  • Michael Corliss

    Great charts. One I was disappointed not to see was a comparison between the total expected days sunlight before signing and the total observed days sunlight before signing.  This type of transparency doesn’t seem to be an all-or-nothing game.

  • http://srynas.blogspot.com/ Steve R.

    Obama’s rhetoric is nothing more than “smoke and mirrors” to promote “bread and circuses” for political gain. One aspect of Obama’s ersatz transparency is “deficit reduction”. 

    Obama is proposing to increase the deficit, not reduce it. Yet he publicly proclaims to be reducing the deficit, despite continued continued deficit spending and continued requests to increase the debt limit. No transparency here.

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