Order to the Executive Branch

For observers of the Bush administration concerned about all those signing statements and executive orders, there's some good news. The Washington Post [1] reports (emphasis added):

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget.

The Bush administration often issued executive orders or weakened agency standards to try to bypass Congress or simply ignore bedrock legislation [2], particularly if it concerned clean air or water. Apparently, an Obama administration will be far more committed to both medical and climate science:

Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's...

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said in January.

Slate also has good suggestions for the top ten executive orders to toss [3].

Executive orders are powerful tools that can be abused, of course. Bush's attempts to weaken environmental standards were often challenged in court, and he often lost. We'll see how Obama uses the office, but if this early report is accurate, the trend seems to be one of restoring protections rather than overreach, and giving sound science its proper influence.