SEOUL — President Biden, who is eager to pass legislation authorizing emergency aid to Ukraine without delay, has ordered an aide to fly to South Korea with the physical copy of the measure so he can sign it during his five-day trip to Asia, two government officials said. on Saturday.
The aide, who carried the $40 billion bill approved by Congress this week, took a commercial flight to Seoul, where Biden is in talks with his South Korean counterpart. Aides said the president would put pen to paper shortly after arriving. Mr Biden is expected to fly to Japan on Sunday.
The expediency of flying bills to presidents while out of town has a long history, especially for chief executives who have spent long periods of time on private estates or ranches. President George W. Bush took it the other way in 2005 when he broke away from a Texas vacation to fly back to Washington, only to sign a law there intended to keep a comatose woman in Florida alive. despite her husband’s wishes. Mr. Bush didn’t want to risk dying in the few hours it took to fly it to him.
President Barack Obama renounced the tradition in 2011, when he was in France for an international summit and ordered the use of a car pen in Washington to sign a bill that extends the Patriot Act by less than 15 minutes until national law. security law would have expired. The extension had passed Congress so late that there was not enough time to fly him to France.
Critics complained that using a machine was unconstitutional, but it was not tested in court. Obama used the car pen again later that year while in Indonesia and again in 2013 while in Hawaii to sign a bill that averted a fiscal crisis.
However, Mr Biden did not adopt his former partner’s use of the machine, instead turning to the old-fashioned method of rushing legislation to a traveling president.
