Obama Reverses his Executive Order on Stem Cell Research

  Earlier this week our president issued an executive order to lift President Bush’s ban on using federal funds to fund embryonic stem cell research. This was a  promise that he made during the campaign and earlier this week he fulfilled his promise.

  But then on Wednesday he proceeded to break that very same promise as he signed a ban of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research into law. When President Obama signed the omnibus bill, the bill that contains over 8,000 earmarks, he broke more that just his promise to veto any bill that contained earmarks, he also broke his promise to use federal funds for stem cell research.

The order went on to say: “The Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary), through the Director of NIH, may support and conduct responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research, to the extent permitted by law.”

Thanks to the Dickey-Wicker language in Section 509 of the omnibus bill, the “extent permitted by law” will continue to forbid federal funding of research that even puts embryos at risk.

  On page 280 of the omnibus spending bill lies the ban on federally funding embryonic stem cell research. Why then did the president sign this bill if it contained a ban on the very practice that he legalized just two days earlier?

  Perhaps he did not read the bill, we know that nobody read the stimulus bill before it was voted on so it is quite possible that he didn’t know what he was signing. It is absolutely believable that the president had no idea that this ban was in the bill because he didn’t read it.

  Or maybe he knew about the ban and signed it anyway. When dear leader signed the executive order Monday lifting the ban it was a highly publicized event. There was a crowd gathered to watch the signing, it was a big deal. But notice the last phrase in the quote I posted above, “to the extent permitted by law.” Did he know that he would shortly be signing a bill that would ban the funding? Is that why he couched his statement with that last remark?

  When the president signed the omnibus bill he did it in a not so public manner, the opposite of the manner in which he signed the executive order. He signed it behind closed doors. Was this because he was breaking his no earmark promise or was this because he knew that he was breaking the promise that he just delivered on two days earlier?

  President Obama once again has publicly said one thing while privately doing the opposite, the examples of this duplicity are beginning to add up. President Obama knew that his lifting of the ban would gain him great publicity in the media, he made it a big event, but then when he reversed his executive order he did it while in hiding, and if he knew what he was signing, he knew that his willing accomplices in the media would not report it. He knew that people wouldn’t hear about this major flip-flop and so he was free to contradict his own executive order.

  It is either that or he really didn’t have any idea what he was signing. You be the judge, either way the end result is the same. President Obama is either trying to please opposing sides of the same issue, or he was just ignorant of the facts.