While President Barack Obama may not technically issue executive orders at the rate of his predecessors, a new report from USA Today found that the president has issued one form of executive order, known as the presidential memorandum, "more often than any other president in history."
Because memoranda have the same power to make laws as executive orders do, Obama can use that technicality to sidestep Congress and take unilateral action while still claiming he has signed fewer executive orders, USA Today said.
As of Tuesday, Obama has issued 195 executive orders and 198 presidential memoranda. That's 33 percent more in his six years in office than Bush issued in his whole eight years, and 45 percent more than former President Bill Clinton did in his eight years.
According to USA Today, "When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the 'Do Nothing Congress' almost seven decades ago."
"There are subtle differences," notes USA Today, "Executive orders are numbered; memoranda are not. Memoranda are always published in the Federal Register after proclamations and executive orders. And under Executive Order 11030, signed by President Kennedy in 1962, an executive order must contain a 'citation of authority,' saying what law it's based on. Memoranda have no such requirement."
It was only in July that Obama said, "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. 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."
These claims were reaffirmed by both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
The president's most controversial memoranda in recent times was his decision to grant de facto legal status for up to 5 million illegal immigrants. Others include memoranda directing law enforcement agencies to trace firearms as part of federal probes, imposing economic sanctions, directing the Labor Department to collect salary data from federal contractors to verify what they are paying women and minorities, and one on Tuesday declaring Bristol, Alaska off-limits to oil and gas exploration.
