The threat of Bush's signing statements

[question everything]

The threat of Bush's signing statements

By Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein
July 7, 2006

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter held a little-noticed hearing in late June to air concerns about presidential signing statements.

No wonder the hearing drew scant attention from the media. Presidential signing statements at first glance are just rhetoric – things presidents say when they sign bills passed by Congress to explain their positions on the relevant issues.

Who cares beyond a few historians and lawyers? Sen. Specter does! The five-term Pennsylvanian Republican believes – and said at the hearing – that the new wave of presidential signing statements are a serious challenge to our country's system of checks and balances. We agree.

(snip)

Since 2001, President Bush has objected on constitutional grounds to more than 500 provisions in more than 100 pieces of legislation – a number approaching the 575 constitutional statements issued by all of his predecessors combined.

(snip)

This use of presidential signing statements seems to us clearly to violate the Constitution. Article I of our founding document gives Congress, not the president, the power to make the laws. Article II requires the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The Constitution also gives the president the authority to veto laws that he finds objectionable. And if he does, the Constitution states that Congress may either “override” the veto, in which case it becomes law, or it may sustain it, and the bill will fail. By signing a particular bill into law and then issuing a signing statement that declares that he will not give effect to it, or to a provision of it, the president effectively circumvents these constitutional requirements, as well as displaces the courts as the final expositor of the Constitution.

(snip)

Despite all the other partisanship in Washington, the threat to our system of checks and balances is not a partisan issue. This is why we joined the bipartisan Constitution Project's Coalition to Defend Checks and Balances (www.constitutionproject.org), whose members are former government officials and judges, scholars, and other Americans deeply concerned about the threat to our system of government, in which the Founders deliberately divided power and authority so that no single person would assume unfettered control.

(snip)


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060707/news_lz1e7mann.html

[Monkeyman]

1. One Signing Statement

Stoped cold the IG from looking for the 26 billion missing in Iraq

[smtpgirl]

2. So why is this a priority now?

Bush has done this since 2001?

Maybe re-election?

[MissWaverly]

4. ABA, American Bar Association has jumped in

they are reviewing the legality of these statements, it's about time.

[MissWaverly]

3. One signing statement

declared that Bush did not have to follow the torture restrictions of the McCain Bill

[MasonJar]

5. Was that before or after McCain last hugged the naked emperor?