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Last week, Mr. Obama signed defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identification -- 12 years after it was first introduced. The same legislation also tightened the rules of admissible evidence for military commissions, an issue that consumed Congress in debate in 2007 but received almost no attention this go-round.
Other new measures signed into law since the administration took office, all of which kicked up controversy in past congresses, make it easier for women to sue for equal pay, exclude land in the West from any form of energy development, give the government the power to regulate tobacco and raise tobacco taxes to expand health insurance for children. Congress and the White House, in the new defense-policy bill, also killed weapons programs that have survived earlier attempts at termination, among them, the F-22 fighter jet and the Army's Future Combat System.
Rob Nabors, the White House's deputy budget director, called the series of new laws
"a very, very quiet but important victory."[snip]
Other issues that once consumed Congress are now sailing into law, often without much public notice.
Senior White House political adviser David Axelrod said his opponents in Congress are absorbed with defeating Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul, what he calls "the shiny object that they've chased." As a result, he contends, other measures have been left to pass into law.
"The administration is pushing so many things so rapidly it's difficult to concentrate on all of them"
Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), a conservative leader in the House, concedes that, in some cases, Republicans are being overwhelmed;While President Barack Obama still faces stiff headwinds on a range of major legislation on his agenda, he has been signing into law a slew of smaller initiatives that had gathered dust on the Democratic wish list for years...
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