releases: https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/media-center/latest-headlines/airport-bill-one-of-296-obama-signs
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/media-center/latest-headlines/airport-bill-one-of-296-obama-signs | Airport Bill One of 296 Obama Signs | 2014-12-27 | 2014 | 2014-12 | Democrat | House | MO | Claire McCaskill | M001170 | www.mccaskill.senate.gov | legacy | Airport Bill One of 296 Obama Signs Saturday, December 27, 2014 By: Keith E. Domke It’s never happened before, and it may never happen again. An actual act of Congress and the signature of the sitting president of the United States enacted a law centered on and only on St. Clair. And, when people look hard enough back on the 113th session of Congress, they will see that the Franklin County community forever is linked with golfer Jack Nicklaus and the passenger pigeon. President Barack Obama’s signing of Senate Bill 2759 climaxed a December that featured both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives first approving the bill before it was forwarded to the leader of the free world. The bill authorizes the closure of the St. Clair Regional Airport. It states that it is “a bill to release the city of St. Clair from all restrictions, conditions and limitations on the use, encumbrance, conveyance and closure of the St. Clair Regional Airport.” Additional language in the bill provides details regarding the closure process and the transfer of assets, revenues and equipment as well as the monetary value of the property and the worth of the unamortized federal grants turned over to the Federal Aviation Administration. The legislation was a stand-alone bill, meaning nothing else was attached to it. It was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and cosponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt, both of Missouri. U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer worked it through the House. A review of the 113th Congress provided by The Associated Press showed the airport closure bill was one of 296 signed into law by Obama before Christmas, the second-lowest total for any two-year Congress in records dating to the 1940s. The session that President Harry S. Truman dubbed the “do-nothing Congress” of 1947-48 enacted more than 900 laws. Leaving the Capitol before the holidays, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that lawmakers should have achieved more, “but that’s what we got.” During the session, each party accused the other of scuttling bills for political purposes ahead of November’s elections, which gave Republicans firm control of the House and Senate in 2015. But, the St. Clair airport bill wasn’t one of those. In fact, it passed with no trouble in both chambers. “It may come as a surprise to many Missourians, but a municipality such as St. Clair cannot close an airport which it owns and operates without permission from the federal government,” Luetkemeyer said in a press release when it was announced that the House passed the bill. The Associated Press reported that though Obama signed scores of bills into law in the days leading up to Christmas as the session came to a close, they were mostly minor. One of the two mentioned was honoring golfer Jack Nicklaus with a Congressional Gold Medal for his “excellence and good sportsmanship.” Another actually was recognizing the 100th anniversary of the extinction of passenger pigeons. Print Email Tweet | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |