At age 13, Hank was already an artist. I was a counselor at a sports camp he attended and even my untrained eye knew that his cartoons and caricatures were of professional quality. This adolescent from West Virginia would teach us more about passion, through his art, than we could ever have hoped to pass on to him through sports. He was already a young man of fine character and I suspect my influence on him was nil.

It was no surprise when Henry Payne became an editorial cartoonist. He is a Pulitzer runner-up, currently gigging with the Detroit News, and his work is syndicated to 60 newspapers worldwide. Like most in his profession, Henry Payne draws Barack Obama with oversized ears. If I had any more influence on Henry now than I did when he was a camper, I would recommend that he start drawing the President with Pinocchio’s nose.

“Change We Can Believe In,” a slogan of Obama the candidate, is quickly morphing into “Change We Can’t Believe In” for Obama the President. New broken promises litter the White House lawn. A stimulus bill worked out in back rooms and published the morning of the vote must confound those who expected transparency and the campaign’s promise of a five-day public comment period on bills. Appointments of Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson to Treasury Chief of Staff and Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn as undersecretary of Defense break the promise of no political appointees working on regulations or contracts related to their prior employers without a two year buffer. Cigarette tax hikes and new energy taxes fly in the face of a promise not to increase taxes “a single dime” on families making less than $250,000 a year. And how much confidence and integrity are inspired by Timothy Geithner? Can the Treasury boss go after tax cheats when he is one?

A reasonable charge against Obama, the candidate, was that he had spent so much of his time in office campaigning for the next higher office that he never did the job he was elected to do. As President, there is no loftier job for which to campaign. Barack Obama can no longer be a back bench Senator kowtowing to Congressional leaders. Whether or not he has ever exercised executive responsibility, he must demonstrate leadership as President of the United States.

And Obama’s golden opportunity to take charge and keep promises may be on his desk this week. The House passed an omnibus spending package that includes 8,570 earmarks (give or take a few thousand, depending on whom you listen to). The pork is well-distributed among Republicans and Democrats, all trying to bring home the bacon to their communities. During the 2008 campaign, and in his remarks to a joint session of Congress and to the nation via television, Barack Obama announced his intention to curb earmarks. If the Senate, who has delayed its vote on the spending package, is unable to cut the pork, then Barack Obama can – with one signature and a big, fat veto stamp.

Now, that would be “Change We Can Believe In.”

Obama’s ears on Henry Payne’s drawings would still be large. But perhaps his nose could stay the same.

For Henry Payne’s work, go to http://henrypayne.com/

How many of Obama's nominees have deigned not to pay taxes?

The ones making the headlines have been:

Timothy Geithner, income taxes (confirmed as Treasury Secretary)
Tom Daschle, income taxes (HHS Secretary, withdrew)
Nancy Killefer, unemployment taxes (Chief Performance Officer at OMB, withdrew)

Hilda Solis was confirmed as Secretary of Labor. Her husband, the sole proprietor of an auto repair business and filing separate returns from Solis, recently paid outstanding tax liens on his business dating back to 1993. Solis was not held to blame for her husband's tax situation.

As I said over there at my place, I don't agree with everything Obama has done, or not done. Like vetting his nominees well enough. Giving a nice talking point out for free. On the other hand, I take him to be serious and smart, and trying -- against the odds -- to find a way out of the messes left by GWB and his philosophical ilk. "Ilk." I like the word. Might be the first time I've actually used it. (Looks better when not capitalized.)

Mainly, though, I look forward to seeing what fuse has to say. And to how long this little experiment lasts.

President Obama signed the 1,132 page omnibus spending bill today, in private. I don't know how many members of Congress actually read the thing.

I know he missed an opportunity to lead. But he did not miss the opportunity to claim that this must mark "the end of the old way of doing business."

A little more ink on that nose, please, Henry.

Isn't Obama's problem that the very system in the US not only permits of earmarks but may even encourage them?Is it entrenched in tradition ?

In some countries it is utterly impossible for an earmark to get into any kind of bill.When you have a parliamentary government where one party has a working, simple majority, there's no way in which any individual MP can exercise any kind of pressure to get any favouritism for some local pet project.The others would be up in arms, anyway, but the leader wouldn't allow it (there'd be national uproar, if he did, and it wouldn't be justifiable as part of government policy).Where there's a coalition of parties the problem is only that one party may hold out for concessions for its own policies ,holding a balance of power, under the threat of bringing down the government. That's a long way from giving the MP for one constituency a special benefit for their own constituency. If you add to that the constitutional provision that no bill is to have any clause which is not directed to the main object of the bill, you have yet another safeguard.(That's part of the UK's constitution but not likely to be unique )

What would happen if he vetoed the whole bill? Is he empowered, or entitled to expect, to cut out every bit of 'pork'or 'earmark' from the bill,picking out the bits he doesn't like, and find that bill will pass? (I'm assuming, in my ignorance, that the President can't simply excise bits of a bill presented to him and pass it into law without more ado)

It's notable in this case , that some 40 per cent or so are Republican earmarks, supposedly, so they are all at it.If that's the case, how do you stop anyone crying foul and 'not fair' if theirs is not granted? They are likely to say that they have as much right to an earmark as the next person, aren't they, and, at best, do trades among themselves, still leaving plenty of earmarks overall? How do you get them all to deny all earmarks?

quote:

I'm assuming, in my ignorance, that the President can't simply excise bits of a bill presented to him and pass it into law without more ado

Your assumption is correct. What you are referring to is called a "line item" veto.

From Wikipedia -
Presidents have repeatedly asked Congress to give them a line item veto power. According to Louis Fisher in The Politics of Shared Power, Ronald Reagan said to Congress in his 1986 State of the Union address, "Tonight I ask you to give me what forty-three governors have: Give me a line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat." Bill Clinton echoed the request in his State of the Union address in 1995.

The President was briefly granted this power by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 11 times to strike 82 items from the federal budget by President Bill Clinton. [3][4]

However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled on February 12, 1998, that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998, by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York.


The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 enacted a line-item veto for the Federal government of the United States, but its effect was brief due to judicial review.

Public Law (P.L.) 104-130 [1] was introduced by Senator Bob Dole on 4 January 1995, cosponsored by Senator John McCain and 28 other senators. Related House Bills included H.R. 147, H.R. 391, H.R. 2,H.R. 27 and H.R. 3136. The bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on April 9, 1996 and was immediately challenged in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by a group of six senators, first among whom was Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), where it was declared unconstitutional by District Judge Harry Jackson, a Reagan appointee, on April 10, 1997. The case was subsequently remanded by the Supreme Court of the United States with instructions to dismiss on the grounds that the senators had not suffered sufficient, particularized injury to maintain suit under Article III of the United States Constitution (i.e., the senators lacked standing). The case, Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811 (1997), was handed down on June 26, 1997, and did not include a judgement on the constitutional grounds of the law.

It was used against one provision of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and two provisions of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 before being challenged again in two separate cases; one by the City of New York, two hospital associations, one hospital, and two health care unions; the other by a farmers' cooperative from Idaho and an individual member of the cooperative. Senators Byrd, Moynihan, Levin, and Hatfield again opposed the law, this time through Amicus curiæ briefs.

Judge Thomas Hogan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia combined the cases and declared the law unconstitutional on February 12, 1998. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998 by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York. Justices Breyer, Scalia, and O'Connor dissented.

US Constitution

Article 1
Section 7 - Revenue Bills, Legislative Process, Presidential Veto

All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.


*********
Something the Congress missed when they passed the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 is that the President does not constitutionally have that right, and it takes more than Congress alone to change the Constitution. (I can only assume that none had taught high school civics. It's in the curriculum.) Note that Senator Byrd was one of the six senators filing suit. Byrd has carried a copy of the US Constitution whenever he stepped on the Senate floor since the 1960s.