As background for this post, here is a passage from Senator Obama’s biography on the official Obama-Biden website.
He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
Many Obama supporters have, ad nauseum, labeled the Senator a “Constitutional scholar.”  Obama himself repeatedly puffs out his chest with this part of his resume.
Well, something has been bothering me about the first Obama-McCain debate. That is Obama’s complete lack of understanding about the Consitution when it comes to the budget-making process.  Here is the transcript of the debate that I’m referring to:
But let’s go back to the original point. John, nobody is denying that $18 billion is important. And, absolutely, we need earmark reform.  And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.
But the fact is that eliminating earmarks alone is not a recipe for how we’re going to get the middle class back on track.
As Seth and Amy would say on “Weekend Update”… REALLY?  Really, Senator Obama? You’d go line-by-line in the US budget? How is that possible, Senator, when the President does NOT HAVE A LINE-ITEM VETO?Â
Not that Republicans haven’t tried. Reagan wanted a line-item veto.  So did Newt Gingrich’s Congress.  Bill Clinton had it, for a time.
But Obama, The Constitutional Scholar, thinks the US President HAS that power now. I’m completely dumbfounded by Obama’s ignorance given this is supposed to be his specific area of knowledge.  It is outrageous that his understanding of the Constitution is not being explored by the media, since HE and his supporters bring it up all the time as one of his main qualifications to be President.
And it wasn’t just a slip of the tongue on debate night. Obama has repeatedly said he would use the line-item veto. Here, and here, and here.
“I’m not a Democrat that believes we should befriend every government program just because it’s there,†Obama said, pledging to go through the federal budget line by line as president to eliminate programs that do not work.
If he doesn’t know the facts of one of the most talked about Republican-Democrat policy disputes over the past 25 years (passage of a line-item veto), what else is he ignorant about while he campaigns to “uphold and protect” the Constitution?
I wonder… maybe Obama learned Rev. Wright’s version of the US Constitution? You know, the one that highlights slavery, white domination, Marxism and spreading the AIDS virus from government labs.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
Fits his m.o. to a tee. He pretends there is a line item veto the same way he pretends he can give tax cuts to people who do not pay taxes. He pretends that “no preconditions” means plenty of preconditions. He pretends that he has oodles of legislative experience. He pretends that his letters to the treasury, foreign leaders, God, and Papa John’s Pizza have all created action. He pretends he knows where bin Laden is and he will send a Yellow Cab to pick him up.
He has sold a lot of snake oil already. So why not sell the line item veto. If necessary, he can always say that Cheney stole it.
And yet you’ll never hear anything about this gaffe from the MSM…
Writing letters is not the same as actually voting yes or no on an issue. Writing letters is what people with too much time on their hands do, not politicians with a job.
Ok, people with time on their hands also write comments on blogs, but hey – I never claimed to be THE ONE who will save this country!
Bruce, no where in the quotes you cite did Senator Obama say he would “veto” line itens. He said he would go through the federal budget line by line and eliminate waste.
There are two ways he can do this: 1) He can have his Office of Management and Budget more closely review every budget request coming in from departments and agencies before the budget is sent up to Congress, or 2) his OMB can closely review the budget appropriations approved by Congress and refuse to spend money he considers wasteful and innecessary.
Radical socialist party claims Obama was a member in 1996. This would seem to be rather more substantial than Sarah Palin’s husband being in the AIP.
Which president was trashed for doing so within the past few years? Help me out with that one.
And Biden, despite having sat on the Judiciary committee for 30 some-odd years, thinks the first article of the Constitution establishes the executive, and that the Constitution doesn’t mandate that the Vice President preside over congress.
Why bother familiarizing yourself with something you intend to ignore anyway?
sorry, that should read preside over the Senate
Obama also wants to do away with the Due Process Clause in the US Constitution.
The other day he said the AIG employees who went to the retreat should be fired and AIG should give the USA an equivalent of the cost of that retreat.
Beside the point was that these were NOT AIG execs but top selling insurance agents (needed to keep the one money making part of that company a going concern) and the retreat had been pre-paid and pre-planned long before AIG was on anyone’s radar.
But no matter.
What does matter is the Constitution.
Obama is too ready to throw our Constitution under the bus.
Your assumption that “line by line” is a reference to a line-item veto is in error.
“Each year, the President of the United States submits his budget request to Congress for the following fiscal year, as required by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. Current law (31 U.S.C. 1105(a)) requires the President to submit a budget no earlier than the first Monday in January, and no later than the first Monday in February. Typically, Presidents submit budgets on the first Monday in February” (Taken Nov 19, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget).
The lack of a line-item veto has nothing to do with the responsibility that the President has to submit a budget to Congress for each and every fiscal year. A President may scrutinize it beforehand, line by line, or in any way deemed appropriate. For those who think the Constitution is all inclusive, the Constitution says nothing about the President’s responsibility for the budget. Article I, dealing with the Congress, states that “a regular Statement and Account of Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time” but does not assign the responsibility to the President. That came later.