With jobs order, Obama gives veterans more to celebrate
By Joe Davidson–Washington Post
Presidential executive orders are lofty, historical documents, generally signed in White House ceremonies with pomp and circumstance. Seldom do we think of them beginning in a small town on the eastern edge of West Virginia.
But it was in Shepherdstown, with a population of 803 at last count, where President Obama’s latest executive order, designed to facilitate the hiring of veterans in the federal government, got its start.
Since 1944, federal law has required that vets be given certain preferences when federal agencies hire. And this isn’t the first time an administration has made noise about being nice to vets. What will come of this latest effort remains to be seen.
But the quiet signing ceremony in the Oval Office on Monday evening certainly was an important move in the right direction. By establishing an interagency council and requiring that progress be tracked and reported back to the president, the executive order created a mechanism with teeth.
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