Partial List of United States Federal Executive Orders

en.wikipedia.org... I will warn you now, not all of the links in the wikipedia data base are valid (don't ask why they are still there), but I only used the ones that can be verified.

The President can issue executive orders pursuant to a grant of discretion from Congress, or under the inherent powers that office holds to deal with certain matters of foreign policy.

Many early executive orders were not recorded. The State Department began numbering executive orders in the early 20th century, starting retroactively from President Abraham Lincoln's Executive Order Establishing a Provisional Court in Louisiana issued in 1862.

There have been grumblings over the amount of executive orders that Obama as instituted while in office...guess what?...He is lacking...there are several other President's that have eclipsed his number.

This is a list and some of the orders that have been issued by past President's..

Franklin D. Roosevelt-3,522
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Executive Order 6073-The Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and empowered under such regulations as he may prescribe to permit any member bank of the Federal Reserve System and any other banking institution organized under the laws of the United States, to perform any or all of their usual banking functions, except as otherwise prohibited.

Woodrow Wilson-1,803

Calvin Coolidge-1,203

Theodore Roosevelt-1,081

Herbert Hoover-968

Harry S. Truman-907
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Executive Order 9538-...The Civil Service Commission is authorized to certify for probational appointment any person (1) whose name appeared on any list of eligibles at any time between May 1, 1940, and March 16, 1942, with respect to positions generally, or between May 1, 1940, and October 23, 1943, with respect to positions in the field service of the Post Office Department, (2) who entered the armed forces of the United States between such dates and was separated therefrom under honorable conditions and is still qualified to perform the duties of the position...

William Howard Taft-724

Warren G. Harding-522
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I cut the list off at 500 orders, but that does not diminish the importance of other Presidential orders that were instigated by Eisenhower, Nixon, LBJ, Kennedy, Carter, Ford, Clinton, Bush Sr. or Reagan.


George W. Bush-291
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By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and in furtherance of the Proclamation of September 14, 2001, Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks, which declared a national emergency by reason of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States, I hereby order as follows:

Executive Order 13223-...to provide additional authority to the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation to respond to the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States, the authority under title 10, United States Code, to order any unit, and any member of the Ready Reserve not assigned to a unit organized to serve as a unit, in the Ready Reserve to active duty for not more than 24 consecutive months...

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Executive Order 13224-Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit,
Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism...

Barack Obama-157
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Executive Order 13491-Executive Order 13491 of January 22, 2009; Ensuring Lawful Interrogations:

Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked. All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order...

en.wikisource.org...

Executive Order 13603-Executive Order 13603 of March 16, 2012;
National Defense Resources Preparedness....

Sec. 101. Purpose.

This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (the “Act”)...

Sec. 102. Policy.

The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States.

There are many sections in this order.

The orders themselves vary in importance from President to President based on the current events they were each dealing with at the time. It is not the amount that matters really..it is the intent of said orders.

Any order that deals with the national security or safety of American citizens here or abroad on foreign soil is deemed necessary...President's can not wait for Congress to write a law...sometimes they need to act quickly....that is the intent behind an executive order, however, I suspect if I were to research the 13,000+ that have been written over the past 200+ years that the USA has existed, I would find that has not always been the case. After limited research I was able to determine that not all of these executive orders had to with national security or foreign policy actions.

There is a mixture in my opinion from Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama of some orders that circumvented the intent, but anything post 9/11 was deemed for the purposes of national security and therefore within the scope. Many of the executive orders under Bush Jr. and Obama do not seem to have much to do with national security.

Some of these were very necessary and some were just ridiculous and had nothing to do with the expressed intent of having a need to enact an executive order. As I understand it, the only time an executive order is necessary is when time is of the essence and proper channels cannot be waited on.

Maybe I am misunderstanding this...feel free to inform me...if you manage to read this entire article I will be shocked. For those of you that do, thank you...you get milk and cookies courtesy of me!

Soul

reply to post by soulpowertothendegree


Anything can be abused.

When executive orders circumvent the process of law or obligations to the nation or by way of congressional approval, they become edicts. This is the abuse part of the equation.

In a time of national emergency, the president may need to act unilaterally/individually to assure the safety of the nation. However, when it is applied because the order seeks to bypass the will of the people... for that reason alone, it becomes abusive.

That's what we need to watch for.