Obama issues ‘orders by
another name’
He’s used presidential memoranda more than any president
He’s used presidential memoranda more than any president
Gregory Korte — President Obama has signed a form of executive action
known as a presidential memorandum more often than any other president in
history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has issued fewer
executive orders.
When these two forms of directives are combined, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the “Do Nothing Congress” nearly seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.
Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He’s used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he issued a memorandum declaring Bristol Bay, Alaska offlimits to oil and gas exploration.
Like executive orders, presidential memoranda don’t require action by Congress. They have the same force of law as executive orders and often have consequences just as far-reaching. And some of the most significant actions of the Obama presidency have come not by executive order but by presidential memoranda.
Obama has made prolific use of memoranda despite his own claims that he’s used such power less than other presidents.
“The truth is, even with all the actions I’ve taken this year, I’m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years,” Obama said last July. “So it’s not clear how it is that Republicans didn’t seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did.”
Obama has issued 195 executive orders as of Tuesday. Published alongside them in the Federal Register are 198 memoranda — all of which carry the same legal force.
He’s already signed 33% more memoranda in less than six years than Bush did in eight. He’s also issued 45% more than the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who assertively used memoranda to signal what kinds of regulations he wanted federal agencies to adopt.
Obama is not the first president to use memoranda to accomplish policy aims. But at this point in his presidency, he’s the first to use them more often than executive orders. “There’s been a lot of discussion about executive orders in his presidency, and of course by sheer numbers he’s had fewer than other presidents. So the White House and its defenders can say, ‘He can’t be abusing his executive authority; he’s hardly using any orders,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a presidency scholar at Bowdoin College. “But if you look at these other vehicles, he has been aggressive in his use of executive power.”
So even as he’s quietly used memoranda to signal policy changes to federal agencies, Obama and his allies have claimed he’s been more restrained in his use of that power.
The White House would not comment on how it uses memoranda but has previously said Obama’s executive actions “advance an agenda that expands opportunity and rewards hard work and responsibility.”
While executive orders have become a kind of Washington shorthand for unilateral presidential action, presidential memoranda have gone largely unexamined. Yet memoranda are often as significant to everyday Americans as executive orders.
• In his State of the Union Address in January, Obama proposed a new retirement savings account for low-income workers called a MyRA. The next week, he issued a memorandum to the Treasury Department instructing it to develop a pilot program.
• In April, Obama directed the Department of Labor to collect salary data from federal contractors and subcontractors to monitor whether they’re paying women and minorities fairly.
• In June, Obama told the Department of Education to allow certain borrowers to cap student loan payments at 10% of income.
They can also be controversial.
Obama issued three presidential memoranda after the Sandy Hook school shooting two years ago. They ordered federal law enforcement to trace any firearm that’s part of a federal investigation, expanded the data available to the national background check system, and instructed agencies to research the causes and possible solutions to gun violence.
Two more recent memos directed the administration to coordinate an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system — a move that congressional Republicans say exceeded his authority.
Kenneth Lowande, a political science doctoral student at the University of Virginia, counted up memoranda published in the Code of Federal Regulations since 1945.
In an article published in the December issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, he found that memoranda appear to be replacing executive orders.
“If you look at some of the titles of memoranda recently, they do look like and mirror executive orders,” Lowande said. The difference may be one of political messaging, he said. An “executive order,” he said, “evokes potentially damaging questions of ‘imperial overreach.’”
When these two forms of directives are combined, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the “Do Nothing Congress” nearly seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.
Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He’s used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he issued a memorandum declaring Bristol Bay, Alaska offlimits to oil and gas exploration.
Like executive orders, presidential memoranda don’t require action by Congress. They have the same force of law as executive orders and often have consequences just as far-reaching. And some of the most significant actions of the Obama presidency have come not by executive order but by presidential memoranda.
Obama has made prolific use of memoranda despite his own claims that he’s used such power less than other presidents.
“The truth is, even with all the actions I’ve taken this year, I’m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years,” Obama said last July. “So it’s not clear how it is that Republicans didn’t seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did.”
Obama has issued 195 executive orders as of Tuesday. Published alongside them in the Federal Register are 198 memoranda — all of which carry the same legal force.
He’s already signed 33% more memoranda in less than six years than Bush did in eight. He’s also issued 45% more than the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who assertively used memoranda to signal what kinds of regulations he wanted federal agencies to adopt.
Obama is not the first president to use memoranda to accomplish policy aims. But at this point in his presidency, he’s the first to use them more often than executive orders. “There’s been a lot of discussion about executive orders in his presidency, and of course by sheer numbers he’s had fewer than other presidents. So the White House and its defenders can say, ‘He can’t be abusing his executive authority; he’s hardly using any orders,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a presidency scholar at Bowdoin College. “But if you look at these other vehicles, he has been aggressive in his use of executive power.”
So even as he’s quietly used memoranda to signal policy changes to federal agencies, Obama and his allies have claimed he’s been more restrained in his use of that power.
The White House would not comment on how it uses memoranda but has previously said Obama’s executive actions “advance an agenda that expands opportunity and rewards hard work and responsibility.”
While executive orders have become a kind of Washington shorthand for unilateral presidential action, presidential memoranda have gone largely unexamined. Yet memoranda are often as significant to everyday Americans as executive orders.
• In his State of the Union Address in January, Obama proposed a new retirement savings account for low-income workers called a MyRA. The next week, he issued a memorandum to the Treasury Department instructing it to develop a pilot program.
• In April, Obama directed the Department of Labor to collect salary data from federal contractors and subcontractors to monitor whether they’re paying women and minorities fairly.
• In June, Obama told the Department of Education to allow certain borrowers to cap student loan payments at 10% of income.
They can also be controversial.
Obama issued three presidential memoranda after the Sandy Hook school shooting two years ago. They ordered federal law enforcement to trace any firearm that’s part of a federal investigation, expanded the data available to the national background check system, and instructed agencies to research the causes and possible solutions to gun violence.
Two more recent memos directed the administration to coordinate an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system — a move that congressional Republicans say exceeded his authority.
Kenneth Lowande, a political science doctoral student at the University of Virginia, counted up memoranda published in the Code of Federal Regulations since 1945.
In an article published in the December issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, he found that memoranda appear to be replacing executive orders.
“If you look at some of the titles of memoranda recently, they do look like and mirror executive orders,” Lowande said. The difference may be one of political messaging, he said. An “executive order,” he said, “evokes potentially damaging questions of ‘imperial overreach.’”
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