By Carol E. Lee
President Barack Obama will still be traveling overseas this weekend when time runs out to sign legislation to keep the government from shutting down, so he’ll sign the bill remotely by invoking a little-used mechanism that allows the White House to mechanically affix his signature to documents, an administration official said.
- Air Force One taxis as President Barack Obama arrives at Bali air force base in Denpasar on Thursday, ahead of the East Asia Summit. (Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images)
The House on Thursday narrowly passed a bill to extend funding for the bulk of federal agencies through mid-December and set in place funding for a handful of them for the rest of the 2012 fiscal year, a move that is expected to be followed by the Senate. The deadline for signing the legislation to avoid a government shutdown is midnight on Saturday. But Mr. Obama will be in Bali, Indonesia, attending a summit of East Asian nations at that time. The White House could have shipped him the legislation, as is sometimes done, but there is little time.
Instead he’ll sign it via autopen, a machine imprint of the president’s signature that can be used at his direction. It will be only the second time in history that a president – Mr. Obama, in both cases — has used the option to sign legislation.
“At this time, the president is scheduled to arrive in D.C. on Sunday morning and the next CR will need to be signed by Saturday to continue normal government operations,” the administration official said in an email, referring to the legislation known as a continuing resolution..
The autopen is not without controversy. Last May, Mr. Obama became the first president to use it to sign legislation when he extended several provisions of the Patriot Act that were set to expire while he was traveling in Europe. Some Republican lawmakers raised objections at the time.
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