Obama backpedaling on stem cells?

posted at 11:40 am on January 17, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Carrie Budoff Brown seems to think Barack Obama has flip-flopped on another campaign promise, but the difference is procedural, not substantial.  Obama campaigned against the Bush executive order barring federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells and said he would reverse it once elected.  Now Politico reports that Obama has backed away from that pledge, but only because he has a way to share the burden:

President-elect Barack Obama signaled Friday that he might not use his executive authority to reverse Bush-era limits on stem cell research, but instead might wait for Congress to change the policy.

Obama pledged during the campaign to lift the restrictions, and political observers had expected him to move swiftly to reverse President Bush’s 2001 executive order – most likely with his own executive order.

But the president-elect suggested Friday that he would wait for Congress to weigh in on the issue.

“Well, if we can do something legislative then I usually prefer a legislative process because those are the people’s representatives,” Obama said in a CNN interview. “And I think that on embryonic stem cell research, the fact that you have a bipartisan support around that issue, the fact that you have Republicans like Orrin Hatch who are fierce opponents of abortion and yet recognize that there is a moral and ethical mechanism to ensure that people with Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s can actually find potentially some hope out there, you know, I think that sends a powerful message.["]

The irony here is that adult stem cells can deliver the pluripotentiality of hEsc products now, with much more stability.  There is little reason now to fund embryonic stem-cell research, which is one of the reasons why hEsc projects can’t find enough private financing.  Bush didn’t block hEsc research, as some claim, but only federal funding for research into new lines, and since that time, it’s been shown as unnecessary — and hEsc has never actually led to any therapeutic solutions anyway, while adult stem-cell therapies have had considerable success.

Now Obama wants to back away from his pledge to end the executive order, but clearly Politico’s headline, “Obama may not lift stem cell limits,” is either irrationally optimistic or simply ignorant of what follows.  Obama intends on having the policy reversed, but instead of doing it by himself, he wants Congress to initiate the changes.  Can Congress override an executive order?  I don’t believe they can, so at some point Obama will have to vacate it — but he’s not going to impose the actual policy change by executive order.

That makes some sense from a procedural point of view.  Congress should initiate most policy, and the executive should work with and through them to get his agenda passed.  It fits with Obama’s statements from the campaign about his views of the relationship between the White House and Capitol Hill, and his criticisms of Bush’s views on that subject.

That doesn’t make the policy right, however, nor does it amount to a reversal on hEsc funding, unfortunately.  Obama knows he can get Congress to initiate federal funding for research built on the destruction of human embryos.  If he can get that kind of political cover, why not use it to the fullest?

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