Tariq Nelson

Barack Obama must have a ton of energy. He must not have slept 4 hours in the last 48 with everything that he has been doing.

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President Barack Obama on Wednesday ordered a pay freeze for top aides making $100,000 or more and signed a series of orders aimed at creating the open government he promised on the campaign trail.

Obama said the moves were aimed at helping to “restore that faith in government without which we cannot deliver the changes we were sent here to make,” drawing a barely veiled contrast between himself and a predecessor who was accused by critics of excessive secrecy and abuses of the law.

In the executive orders and memoranda he signed Wednesday afternoon in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Obama announced that no lobbyist will be allowed to take a job in an area where they lobbied. Nor would former lobbyists who come to work for him be allowed to lobby the administration after leaving government service.

He banned gifts from lobbyists to administration officials. And he said he’d require all those who serve him to commit in writing to refrain from influencing colleagues for two years. The moves represent “a clean break from business as usual,” Obama said.

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