14 DAY TRIAL // The White House announced on Tuesday that all the legislative proposals that former president George W. Bush tried to pass through Congress in the twelfth hour had been stopped, pending a full review from the new administration. Among them are a few bills that will have disastrous consequences on the environment, if they are adopted. All federal agencies and departments were affected by president Barack Obama's decision, and all initiatives were stopped dead in their tracks. The new commander-in-chief seems to be determined to clean the faulty politics that the former president has led over the years.
"This afternoon, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel signed a memorandum sent to all agencies and departments to stop all pending regulations until a legal and policy review can be conducted by the Obama administration," a statement released by the White House just hours after the Inaugural Ceremony in Washington DC, when Obama officially took office, said.
Historically, the period of time between the Election Day and the Inaugural Day is used by the outgoing administration to pass on so-called "last minute regulations," which, in the agitation following the election of a new president, may go unnoticed. Democrat Bill Clinton, Republican George H. W. Bush, and his son, the Republican George W. Bush have been amongst most recent US presidents to have made excessive use of thys type of acts.
Any such act requires a 60-day waiting period before it goes into effect, so most out-bound presidents use the months between the two dates to "squeeze" in important legislation. If all goes according to plan, the new bills can become laws before the new president takes office on January 20th, and then they are too difficult to remove. The cancellation process may last up to a few years, and the bills, once passed, are usually kept.
Among the initiatives that Obama managed to stop were those referring to the permission given to some to carry concealed weapons in national parks, as well as a bill concerning the health care system, which stated that discrimination against doctors and nurses who refused to give out birth control pills or to assist in abortion due to their religious creed was illegal in hospitals, and therefore these institutions should not receive any federal money.
The last proposal is thoroughly absurd, because no one should be forced to ruin their future on account of some member of a religion who sees abortion as immoral. It's written in the Constitution that every American is entitled to their body, which pretty much takes God out of the equation. Religious matters have nothing to do in the court of law and on hospital beds.