Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The ACLU has released a report evaluating President Obama's first year in office. The report is based on a series of recommendations they made before Obama took office, a list of 142 actions they wanted him to take as president. Importantly, all of those steps were things the president could do unilaterally; none of them required Congressional action, so there was no excuse for him not doing them. The result:
The administration has acted on just over one‐third of our recommendations - carrying out 24 outright, and substantively fulfilling another 25, though with qualification. The administration took no action on 66 of our recommendations, while on another 27 actions, the administration substantively failed to comply with our request, but took some positive steps toward achieving the objective.
They rated the president pretty highly on the matters of "open government, civil rights, freedom of speech, and reproductive freedom." On matters of national security and executive power, on the other hand, the administration has ranged from not nearly good enough to downright abysmal.
On the issue of warrantless spying on Americans, Obama did not follow a single recommendation from the ACLU. As far as we know, the entire apparatus of the NSA's data mining program remains in place, all of which is clearly unconstitutional. Just as importantly, the administration is continuing to claim total unilateral authority to spy on anyone they please and to prevent anyone from ever bringing a legal challenge to that authority.
Strangely, the document doesn't even mention the state secrets privilege, which is where the administration has most brazenly sought to undermine the constitution.
My overall grade on the Obama administration on civil liberties matters: D.
Politics
Comments
Has the ACLU issued recommendations (and subsequent report cards) like this before? From what I can tell from the report, it was constructed in response to the previous administration, but it would be nice to have something to compare to.
Posted by: ABradford | January 25, 2010 9:25 AM
Ed states:
Methinks Ed doesn't grade on the curve. You gotta love the guy if you have fealty to standards rather than a team.
Posted by: Michael Heath | January 25, 2010 9:31 AM
You have to wonder what personal incentive Obama has to give up his own power. The Republicans couldn't dare use this, it would be too low even for them. And the general population doesn't seem to care. It would be like putting a bone in front of a dog and saying, "Whatever you do, don't grab that bone."
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve that D. But could you really expect any president to do any better? Yeah I'm depressing like that.
Posted by: Brandon | January 25, 2010 9:45 AM
The Republicans couldn't dare use this, it would be too low even for them.
I see no precedent that would support this prediction. Besides, I think they already use this against Obama under the heading of "See, Obama promised you he would change, but he's not changing" and of course to some degree they are right.
Posted by: Odie | January 25, 2010 10:09 AM
good stuff, Ed.
Totally agree - "D".
Michael Heath (#2):
that is grading on the curve. The previous admin gets a "W"
:)
Posted by: VikingMoose | January 25, 2010 10:17 AM
But could you really expect any president to do any better?
Jefferson rescinded the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Posted by: Balk Onyx | January 25, 2010 4:16 PM
The Sedition Act expired at the end of Adams' term. Jefferson was opposed to the Alien and Sedition Acts while leading the opposition Democratic-Republicans against the Federalists, but he didn't actually "rescind" them once in power. The Alien Friends act also expired, the Naturalization Act was revoked by Congress in 1802, and the Alien Enemies Act remains in force.
Posted by: Chuck | January 25, 2010 4:53 PM
If Obama has either done things the ACLU wanted him to do, partially done things the ACLU wanted him to do and not done things the ACLU wanted him to do, then he gets much higher than a "D".
I didn't see them mention where he did things that the ACLU did not want him to do (the way that Bush did virtually every day). Maybe I am reading it wrong and they are fluffing over stuff he did that they don't like.
Posted by: daedalus2u | January 25, 2010 6:57 PM
To be fair to Bush, he probably did something, at some time, during his 8 years that helped or protected someone's civil rights/civil liberties. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, with 2922 days (based on Bush policies and "effectiveness") I figure Bush had to have gotten something right once or twice.
Posted by: dogmeatib | January 26, 2010 9:05 AM
The ACLU may be giving this administration a good grade. I tend to agree with Ed's "D" on civil liberties, while an "F" is appropriate for Obama's inability to control our biggest issue: Congressional largess. The president has not only failed to control congress, he has facilitated and encouraged irresponsible behavior.
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20100126/NEWS-US-USA-BUDGET-DEFICIT/
Yes, George W. acted in the same way, failing to reign in Democrats or Republicans in congress while executing two expensive wars. He set us on a bad path, and some kind of restraint, or change that we could measure is desperately needed. Exactly the opposite has occurred. W may have made daily mistakes and caused great harm, but by the same measure this administration is not an improvement.
Posted by: Rich | January 26, 2010 5:47 PM
Rich @ 10,
Perhaps you can provide some precise examples of where President Obama could have come down on Congress regarding spending this past year. My review of the budget deficit components does not in any way lead me to be critical of this President on the deficit, in fact the economists I read actually concur that the stimulus component of the deficit was either insufficient or barely sufficient, but certainly not extravagant. That would include economists from the right like Bruce Bartlett to those on the left like Paul Krugman.
In addition, I assume your criticism will be within the framework that federal receipts are a function of the level of output, which includes federal expenditures, and that recessions create marginally higher expenditures by law in several areas, e.g., unemployment insurance and food stamps.
I would also be most appreciative if whatever examples you provided were accompanied with the total saved and whether savings in those components were either stimulative or not given that economies in a recession become disproportionately dependent on federal spending to defend aggregate demand.
I think it should also be noted that this President had always promised to take on the deficit starting this year, a fact mentioned in both his stump speeches and his debate(s) with Sen. McCain (I heard him cover this topic at least once). Just yesterday I hear this indeed will be a topic in his State of the Union Speech tomorrow morning though the initial efforts are focused on the discretionary components of the budget not considered a third rail, which represent about 17% of the total budget (the biggest bulk of the budget is entitlements, Defense, and interest payments on the debt).
One piece of trivia for everyone is that the structural component of the current deficit that Mr. Obama inherited from his predecessor was a $600 billion/yr. annual deficit when the economy is growing, obviously it was far higher in 2008, 2009, and this fiscal year which started in Oct-10 given that federal receipts dropped due to a drop in total output. That component is budgeted through 2019 and was not addressed in Mr. Obama's first budget for obvious reasons (insufficient time, in the middle of a recession). I think it will get tabled later this year.
Posted by: Michael Heath | January 26, 2010 9:09 PM
Michael,
I'm in agreement with many of your points above. And my response is likely to be less precise than you are asking for. But here goes:
My argument is based on these three things:
1. Congress, rather than the president legislates and controls the majority of spending decisions in this country. Far too few Americans paid attention to spending prior to the "Great depression" as Joe Biden is mistakenly called the current bad recession.
2. The president has veto power, bully pulpit, political capital. Also, the president can get us into a war such as Iraq, with vast espenditures in both lives and dollars.
3. Going forward, The administration consistently overstates job growth numbers, stimulus effects, and understates budget effects, giving congress more room to overspend.
Last fall (under Bush), the combination of eminent economic disaster due to failed regulatory policies and individual greed caused the first large stimulus bill to be passed. This was by all means necesary, although with poor accounting and regulation, a scary way to do business (I mean government).
As I clearly stated in my previous post, congress overspent during the Bush years. Both parties. With very little resistance from Bush. And of course wars pushed by the administration added a great deal.
So moderate democrats, independants, and moderate republicans put Obama into power...
My hope was for a change to pork barrel spending, earmarks, and politics as usual in Washington. No I didn't actually expect Obama to be successful, but I hoped there might be some progress. Turns out the dire need for more stimulus in early 2009 gave the perfect cover for the largest outlay of spending in history.
Did we need a large stimulus? I'd argue yes. Did we need inefficient pork and earmarks? No. Should the stimulus have been designed to stimulate or to further democratic political agendas? I'd argue the former. That package contained billions in long term spending for democratic policy advancement on energy, education, all kinds of areas. Now I am not against supporting all these as a general principle, when we can afford them, but when we are in dire economic straits and the whole reason is stimulus, it is precisely the wrong time for partisan agendas. Congress felt a mandate though with the landslide election results.
I believe Obama wasted an amazing opportunity to demand a large, focused stimulus bill with no earmarks and little pork. A two year spending plan to provide stimulus when we most need it, and nothing more. Threaten to veto anything else. If reality had been that it included a few billion thrown to political allies... maybe 10 - 20%, then I would not have minded that much. Cost of doing political business. But an almost trillion dollar bill in the first two months in office? With less than a third of it to be spent in the critical 2009 time period? (Not including cash for clunkers, unemployment benefits, first time home buyer credits (like we need more of those at a time like this)).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/business/economy/26deficit.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=obama%20deficits%20projected&st=cse
You are right to bring up entitlements. They are the biggest contributor to the bleak long term deficit numbers. So how is congress addressing this problem? Creating a new entitlement with health care? Proposing a spending freeze on discretionary spending? This one is a good idea but mostly symbolic. And it is backwards from a stimulus perspective. The out years are when spending needs to be reduced the most.
"...the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26budget.html?hp
Health care is being argued for on the basis of need (too many uninsured) and also on how effective social security and medicare/medicaid have been. They are good programs from the benefit perspective, but bad from a budgeting point of view. Obama's budget director mysteriously argues that Obama inherited the problem of out of control entitlements like medicare/medicaid, so we need to reign in health care by creating a medicare/medicaid like entitlement system. He seems convinced that health care reform will be entitlement reform. I hope he is right, but I am very skeptical. If current entitlements are all in trouble, fixing them rather than starting new ones seems prudent. This congress has said that hundreds of millions in savings will come from reforming medicare/medicaid. Where was that before they wanted this new entitlement?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/19/Fiscal-Responsibility-Summit-Report/
I know there are no easy answers, but overspending should not be an answer at all. Congress needs to balance the budget in good years, and overspend on proven short term stumulus in bad years.
In summary:
1. Congress is the problem.
2. Obama missed a huge opportunity to fundamentally challenge congress and take advantage of the crisis to effect real change.
3. We badly need fiscal responsibility going forward. Is this the administration and congress to do it?
Posted by: Rich | January 27, 2010 1:48 AM
Posted by: llewelly | January 27, 2010 3:58 AM
Rich @ 12:
A couple of observations. First, Mr. Obama didn't have time to baby-sit Congress when the stimulus was developed and the 2010-2019 budget was developed. I saw zero opportunities, not an "amazing one".
A primary factor of the stimulus was speed, in fact the appropriate time to implement a stimulus was the second calendar quarter of 2008, a year earlier. Bush did and it was insufficient. Earmarks are not necessarily waste as you infer, they instead give power to a Congressman to direct funds to a specific project in their home state rather than the state using their discretion on how to allocate funds. Therefore earmarks in general* are not necessarily better or worse than other discretionary spending to the states, one has to look at the quality of the item. Lastly, without quantifying what is pork and percentage of the budget is pork, how can you grade Obama's performance?
It's also important to note that the President repeatedly promised during the 2008 campaign that he would impose a more scrutinous process on developing the budget in calender 2010 for FY 2011 onward budgets. I follow the budgeting processes closely and I saw little time for the President and his team to take on the tasks you criticize him for, do not quantify, and didn't promise to addresse till this year. In fact from my perspective those guys were working insane hours to get out the stimulus plan and significantly improved 2010-onward budget than Bush's given it included the wars and structural deficits that Bush refused to include in his. I am also not aware of any presidents who take on budget process reform in the first year of office given they enter office 3 months into the budget year, get the joint staffed, and get their first budget out prior to the start of the new fiscal year Oct. 1.
Rich @ 12:
I think you are conflating a handful of distinctly different issues in a manner that causes your rhetorical questions to be fatally defective in regards to measuring the President and Congerss's performance. Health insurance reform can or can not be deficit neutral. We spend about 16 - 17% of our GDP on health care, noting that government will subsidize additional care doesn't mean the deficit goes up, or that health care spending in general will go up or even down. Future deficits on entitlements are based on a combination of demographic factors and Washington's incapability to establishing tax receipts that equal planned expenditures. All of these items are structural in nature, not Obama's fault, and will take a massive effort to confront. The health insurance reforms that the President have proposed would in fact contribute to making it easier in the future to reduce deficits though I don't see the current bills doing an adequate enough job, not because of Mr. Obama, but instead an entire opposition party that refuses to engage and govern in spite of the fact we require health insurance reform. Lastly on this point the President had no plans or bandwidth to take on major entitlement reform, he did promise taking those on later in this tenure. I can't imagine doing this in one's first year in office, especially given the fact that the President must plan to see some nominations put on hold.
Rich @ 12:
Without seeing Mr. Orszag's quote I can't comment how far he went with this comment. However there is some entitlement reform in the bills, see here for a short break-down: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/1-reconciliation-2-3-profit.html
I also disagree one has to do entitlements prior to health insurance reform. They are both critical and currently far more people are being harmed because of the economic dysfunctional of health insurance than they are by entitlements as is the economy due to this dilemma. I agree we need entitlement reform but think the priorities are correct.
Rich - your argument left me entirely unconvinced that Obama deserves "F" for not controlling "Congress largesse".
From my perspective, and I go through the OMB budget spreadsheets, Mr. Obama did a great job with the exception of not demanding an adequately sized stimulus bill commiserate with the decline in GDP which economists had underestimated during the stimulus debate which amplifies my point. I realized that the optimal number might not be politically feasible.
This is the year and the next budget round you should be looking for fundamental process improvements on budgeting given this is the year that the President promised such. I do not remember when he promised to take on entitlement reform, which will require tax increases to fund.
*Of course at the shallowest level of review it's generally smarter to allocate money closer to home (the Governor) rather than earmarks on Senatorial earmarks (but not necessarily ones from Representatives). But that's not the context you provided which I addressed. Congress does have constitutional powers to direct funds and such power can be either wisely or unwisely applied and the President's veto power was never warned about until this year's budget process.
Posted by: Michael Heath | January 27, 2010 1:02 PM
"I think you are conflating a handful of distinctly different issues in a manner that causes your rhetorical questions to be fatally defective in regards to measuring the President and Congerss's performance. Health insurance reform can or can not be deficit neutral. We spend about 16 - 17% of our GDP on health care, noting that government will subsidize additional care doesn't mean the deficit goes up, or that health care spending in general will go up or even down. Future deficits on entitlements are based on a combination of demographic factors and Washington's incapability to establishing tax receipts that equal planned expenditures"
I don't believe I've conflated ideas. Yes there are seperate issues discussed here, but which ones have I written about that don't cost vast amounts of money and contribute to the deficit? The fact that we need Health care reform does not deminish it's cost. And while the administration has consitently underestimated the cost, it will contribute to deficits, debt, and larger debt financing cost... or, raise taxes (as your sutle "establishing tax receipts that equal planned expenditures" comment seems to mean). I agree taxes will certainly need to go up. Again something the administration and congress don't want to talk about but is likely inevitable. Yes I understand that government spending on health care could decrease private spending, and may even result in overall reduced spending by citizens. That is the hope. As I've said I am skeptical. And the permanence of new entitlements is a deal breaker for many voters. Think of it this way--if Obama came up with an excellent new plan for health reform, implemented it flawlessly, and it saves money for Americans, what could possibly go wrong? How about if it does not work well forever? No program is likely to be a great thing forever, but once in place it will become the new baseline, with only additions (new costs) added.
Posted by: Rich | January 27, 2010 9:59 PM
Michael,
If I might, I recommend "Free Lunch" by David Cay Johnston. It is not the best writting in the world, and I don't agree with many of his conclusions, but I've found it is a great book for focusing on how the wealthy enrich themselves at government expense. He is overly simplistic at times. Still, it shows pretty effectively how our congress serves large interests to the detriment of individuals. You may be happy that it is far more harsh on conservatives than liberals--but more importantly this enrichment scheme is becomming a permanent system and I see it escalating during this democratic party controlled congress.
Posted by: Rich | January 27, 2010 10:07 PM