IIRC, Obama got an omnibus spending bill (i.e. not a budget with appropriations) at some point, and he was basically able to use it as a slush fund to put money where ever he wanted.
An omnibus spending bill is a type of bill in the United States that packages
many of the smaller regular appropriations bills into one larger single bill that
could be passed with only one vote in each house. There are twelve different
regular appropriations bills that need to be passed each year to fund the federal
government and avoid a government shutdown; an omnibus spending bill combines
one or more of those bills into a single bill.
That's because they let the ignorant, mouthy, stupid, arrogant little sh*tbag get away with anything he wanted because no one wanted to point out that the first "black" President was a simple minded sh*t for Brains that didn't know what he was doing.
Had they told him "You can't do that", everyone would have gasped at the temerity of correcting the first "black" guy to hold the office, so they all just turned their head and looked away while this idiot did what ever he wanted. Nobody wanted to be thought of as a "RACIST!!" for holding Obama to an ordinary standard of behavior.
It was the "soft bigotry of low expectations". Trump will be held to the law, even if Obama got away with ignoring it.
I'm happy that the country decided to prove how "non-racist" it was by electing a black guy. I just wish we had had the good sense to elect an intelligent sensible one instead of that imbecile.
The Omnibus Act is an appropriations act. It’s multiple appropriations wrapped up into one bill instead of 12. There have been 10 since 1985.