eustellab01: Examining the President's veto threats

Sunday 1 May 2011

Examining the President's veto threats

With Congress out of session for a two-week recess, here's something to contemplate: what's up with President Obama's veto messages?

Is there any thing up with them? Maybe. Maybe not.

What do I mean? Take a look at two of the most recent Statements of Administration Policy?the vehicles used by the White House to issue veto threats (or statements of support for a bill, where applicable).

The first and most recent veto threat relates to H.R. 1217, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act?s Prevention and Public Health Fund:

If the President is presented with legislation that would eliminate funding or repeal the Prevention and Public Health Fund, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto it.

The second most recent veto threat relates to H.R. 1363, the first pass at the Department of Defense and Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011:

If presented with this bill, the President will veto it.

See the difference?

So, is there something to it? Is there a reason why the veto threat for that earlier version of the full-year appropriations bill (which included all the terrible riders defunding Planned Parenthood and the ACA, etc.) would be expressed so straightforwardly and unequivocally, but the threat to the Prevention and Public Health Fund repeal bill would get this... different treatment?

Statements of Administration Policy are given to boilerplate language, for the most part. The decision to change the verbiage with respect to veto messages, you'd think, would have to mean something. The question is, does it mean the threat is any less concrete? Or does it just mean that the White House wants to seem somehow less confrontational in delivering the message.

The Obama administration isn't the first to switch back and forth between different formulations. George W. Bush's White House certainly did. But I don't know that there'd be a whole lot of value in comparing the two. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that they might well take different enough approaches to confrontations with Congress that their reasoning might be different even if the actions are the same. And of course, with Bush we have the benefit of hindsight, and we're able to compare the language chose for the veto threat and the actual outcome. That is, we know whether or not Bush eventually vetoed the bill. We don't know that about Obama, since none of the bills threatened have actually been presented to him yet.

But it must mean something, right? So what is it?

Let's take a look at this year's Statements of Administration Policy, sorted by which kind of veto threat language was used, and see if anything emerges.

First, the bills that have gotten the thumbs-down from the President's senior advisers:

H.R. 910, Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011
H.R. 658, FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2011
H.R. 839, HAMP Termination Act
H.R. 861, NSP Termination Act
H.R. 836, Emergency Mortgage Relief Program Termination Act
H.R. 830, FHA Refinance Program Termination Act

Then, the bills that got the direct veto statement:

H.R. 1, Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011
H.R. 2, Repealing the Affordable Care Act

And just for the sake of comparison, bills that drew administration opposition, but no veto statement:

H.R. 1076, Prohibition of Federal Funding of National Public Radio
H.R. 4, Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and Repayment of Exchange Subsidy Overpayments Act of 2011
H.R. 359, Termination of Public Financing of Presidential Campaigns and Party Conventions

So, that's direct veto threats for H.R. 1, H.R. 2, and H.R. 1363, two iterations of the full-year appropriations bill with all the worst policy riders attached, and the first (of many) ACA repeal bills. And then this... different kind of threat for things like the Prevention and Public Health Fund repeal bill, HAMP repeal, NSP termination, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, etc.

What do you think? Is the threat any less serious for this other class of bills than it is for the ones that got direct veto threats? Was the White House looking to give the President more bargaining room on some of these threats? Did the difference have anything to do with which bills they think might actually stand a chance of passing the Senate? Or can the whole thing just be chalked up to a throwaway stylistic difference?

We'll have to stay tuned to find out. But tracking the outcomes as they relate to the language used, should any of these bills actually make it to the President's desk, might be worthwhile.