An executive action by any other name … would smell as bad.
President Obama has been issuing executive actions in the form of “presidential memoranda,” thereby concealing the actual number of times he has enforced unilateral action.
According to USA TODAY, Obama has issued a whopping 198 presidential memoranda in addition to his 195 executive orders, meaning that by the end of his presidency, he will likely end up taking the most high-level executive actions of any president in the last seven decades.
What’s more, the president has issued these memoranda more often than any past commander in chief. He has signed one-third more memoranda in his six years than former President Bush did during his entire presidency.
Just because he isn’t explicitly signing an executive order doesn’t mean that Obama isn’t accomplishing some big feats all by himself.
After all, his recent executive action on immigration was handed down as a presidential memorandum. He has also utilized them to make progress on gun control and other controversial issues.
In short, President Obama is being pretty sneaky. He’s ensuring that he can still unendingly take advantage of unilateral action while also being able to say, as he did this past summer, “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.”
Alas, the next time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) claims that Obama “has issued far fewer executive orders than any two-term president in the last 50 years,” make sure to take it with a big grain of salt.
