The argument that Obama has signed as many executive orders as other presidents in order to diminish what his executive orders are about is now bunk. Obama isn’t just issuing executive orders, he’s also issuing presidential memoranda and he’s doing it at a much more rapid rate than any other president:
USA TODAY – President Obama has used a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has issued fewer executive orders.
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” six decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.
Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He’s used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he used a memorandum to declare Bristol Bay, Alaska, off-limits to oil and gas exploration.
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He’s already signed 33% more presidential memoranda in less than six years than Bush did in eight. He’s also issued 45% more than the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who assertively used memoranda to signal what kinds of regulations he wanted federal agencies to adopt.
Obama is not the first president to use memoranda to accomplish policy aims. But at this point in his presidency, he’s the first to use them more often than executive orders.
I don’t know that he’s abused these memoranda but I wouldn’t put it past him given his propensity for unconstitutional action.