President Obama
vetoed a bill Tuesday to move forward on building the Keystone XL pipeline, marking the beginning of what Michael Shear and Coral Davenport call the "
veto era" of his presidency.
“It’s a new period of his administration,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. “He will use the veto to protect his past record and not allow things he disagrees with to go forward.”
The Keystone veto is the third of Obama's presidency, but he might soon have opportunities to do the same on legislation concerning the Affordable Care Act, Iran sanctions, and child nutrition policy.
If Mr. Obama takes the veto path in his last two years in office, he could easily surpass the 12 vetoes of his immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush. He will not come close to the 635 vetoes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued during his 12 years in office or the 414 by President Grover Cleveland during his first term. But Mr. Obama might match the 37 by President Bill Clinton or the 44 by the first President George Bush.
Although Democrats in the Senate will likely block a good number of Republican bills, only 51 votes are needed to pass certain budget bills, to which Republicans can then attach riders that advance conservative priorities.
Specifically, Mr. McConnell has vowed to attach riders to the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual budget bill that would stop the enactment of two major climate change regulations.
Jody Freeman, director of Harvard’s environmental law program and a former senior counselor to the president, said there was no doubt that Mr. Obama would veto such an effort if Republicans got it through Congress.