What the President Has Signed Into Law – Dec 2008

January 2, 2009 by theo.johnson
Filed under: Blog Entries, Politics

This month was a little better than November for the President. The purpose for this post is to inform you of the new laws and acts enacted by President Bush. It’s good to know what’s going on because some of them may benefit us as a people. It’s important for us to watch every step our government takes. We elect them, so we need to make sure they are doing their job. The laws I list are posted at whitehouse.gov. For a more unbiased version, I’d recommend doing additional research at govtrack.us. As always feel free to leave any additional comments. This is President Bush’s last month and on January 20th, 2009 President Barack Obama will be in charge. I’ll keep doing this post on a monthly basis becasuse we need to know what laws are being enacted.

On Monday, December 1, 2008, the President signed into law:
H.R. 5714, the “United States Army Commemorative Coin Act of 2008,” which requires the Department of the Treasury to mint and issue coins in recognition and celebration of the founding of the United States Army in 1775.

On Tuesday, December 2, 2008, the President signed into law:
H.R. 2040, the “Civil Rights Act of 1964 Commemorative Coin Act,” which requires the Department of the Treasury to mint and issue coins in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964;
S. 602, the “Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007,” which requires the Federal Communications Commission to conduct an inquiry to examine the availability of, and methods of encouraging the use of, advanced blocking technologies that help parents protect their children from transmitted video and audio programming that the parents determine to be indecent or objectionable;
S. 1193, which directs the Secretary of the Interior to take into trust two parcels of Federal land in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the benefit of 19 Indian pueblos; make various technical changes to statutes concerning Native Americans; and extends the authorization for Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial through November 12, 2009.

On Friday, December 19, 2008, the President signed into law:
H.R. 6859, which designates a facility of the United States Postal Service as the Dr. Walter Carl Gordon, Jr. Post Office Building,
S.J.Res. 46, which reduces the compensation of the Secretary of State to the level in effect on January 1, 2007.

On Tuesday, December 23, 2008, the President signed into law:
H.R. 6184, the “America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008,” which establishes a program in which the reverse side of quarter dollars issued beginning in 2010 will have designs emblematic of a national park or other national site in each State, the District of Columbia, and each territory of the United States; and requires these coins to be issued at a rate of five new designs each year in the order in which the sites selected were first established as a national site;
H.R. 7327, the “Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008,” which delays required minimum distributions from certain retirement accounts for one year; makes changes to funding requirements for certain pension plans; and makes other miscellaneous changes to tax and pension laws;
S. 3663, the “Short-term Analog Flash and Emergency Readiness Act,” which requires the Federal Communications Commission to implement a program to encourage and permit analog television broadcasting of safety information and digital television transition information for the 30-day period following the February 17, 2009, digital television transition deadline; and
S. 3712, which conforms the effective date of certain mental health parity requirements for collectively bargained group health plans with the general effective date of mental health parity provisions of Public Law 110-343.