SEOUL — Desirous to enact laws authorizing emergency help for Ukraine at once, President Biden has directed an aide to fly to South Korea with the bodily copy of the measure so he can signal it throughout his five-day journey to Asia, two administration officers mentioned on Saturday.
The aide, carrying the $40 billion invoice handed by Congress this week, was taking a industrial flight to Seoul, the place Mr. Biden is in talks along with his South Korean counterpart. Aides mentioned the president would put pen to paper shortly after its arrival. Mr. Biden is predicted to fly to Japan on Sunday.
The expediency of flying payments to presidents whereas they’re out of city has a protracted historical past, particularly for chief executives who spent prolonged stretches at non-public estates or ranches. President George W. Bush took it the opposite route in 2005 when he broke away from a Texas trip to fly again to Washington solely to be in place to signal a invoice meant to maintain a comatose Florida lady alive regardless of her husband’s needs. Mr. Bush didn’t wish to take the possibility that she would die in the course of the few hours it could take to fly it to him.
President Barack Obama distributed with the custom in 2011 when he was in France for a global summit assembly and ordered the usage of an autopen again in Washington to affix his signature to a invoice extending the Patriot Act with lower than quarter-hour till the nationwide safety regulation would have expired. The extension had handed Congress so late that there was not sufficient time to fly it to France.
Critics complained that utilizing a machine was unconstitutional, nevertheless it was not examined in courtroom. Mr. Obama used the autopen once more later that yr whereas in Indonesia and once more in 2013 whereas in Hawaii to signal a invoice that averted a fiscal disaster.
Mr. Biden has not adopted his onetime associate’s use of the machine, nonetheless, turning as a substitute to the old style technique of speeding laws to a touring president.
