The Bush administration sometimes fails to follow all provisions of laws after President Bush attaches "signing statements" meant to interpret or restrict the legislation, congressional examiners say.
Lawmakers who asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study said it was further proof that the Bush White House oversteps constitutional bounds in ignoring the will of Congress.
"Too often, the Bush administration does what it wants, no matter the law. It says what it wants, no matter the facts," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said Monday. Byrd and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., requested the report.
Signing statements, in which the president appends bills he is signing into law with statements reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard provisions on national security and constitutional grounds, have become a major sticking point in the power struggle between Congress and the White House.
Conyers made signing statements the topic of his committee’s first oversight hearing after Democrats took over control of Congress in January.
The limited GAO study examined signing statements concerning 19 provisions in fiscal year 2006 spending bills. It found that in six of those cases the provisions were not executed as written.
In one case the Pentagon did not include separate budget justification documents explaining how the Iraq War funding was to be spent in its 2007 budget request. In another, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not submit a proposal and spending plan for housing, as Congress directed.
The White House, in issuing the statements, has argued that the president has a right to control executive branch employees and officers, that he has authority to withhold from Congress information sometimes considered privileged or that Congress should not interfere with his constitutional role as commander in chief.
The GAO report, which did not assess the merits of the president’s arguments, said signing statements go back at least to President Andrew Jackson, while citing other congressional studies that such statements have become increasingly common since the Reagan administration.
Byrd and Conyers said Bush has issued 149 signing statements, 127 of which raised some objection. They said the statements often raise multiple objections, resulting in more than 700 challenges to distinct provisions of law.
The GAO said signing statements accompanied 11 of the 12 spending bills in 2006, singling out 160 specific provisions in those bills.
Signing Statements have been Bush’s way of declaring Congress null and void. They were brought to our attention by Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe – who won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the issue. I recall reading that Cheney’s Office [A.K.A. "the OVP"][A.K.A. David Addington] goes over every Congressional action and is intimately involved in the drafting of these "Signing Statements" which invalidate the Congress. Here’s what Savage has to say today. Scattered among the "MSM" are reporters who have done their jobs – Charlie Savage is one of them:
The revelation that investigators had found six laws that were disobeyed within the small sample prompted angry words from the other lawmaker who commissioned the GAO study, Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Robert Byrd , Democrat of West Virginia. He called Bush’s signing statements a "power grab" that undermined Congress’s authority to write the laws.
"The White House cannot pick and choose which laws it follows and which it ignores," Byrd said. "When a president signs a bill into law, the president signs the entire bill. The administration cannot be in the business of cherry-picking the laws it likes and the laws it doesn’t."
But Erik Ablin , a Justice Department spokesman, said, "We reject allegations that the administration is ignoring or selectively following the law."
Bush’s use of the device became the subject of widespread controversy in 2006 following his challenge to a high-profile torture ban the White House had tried to defeat in Congress.
Since Democrats took over Congress, Bush has not issued a signing statement. But Fratto said the reason for their absence is that Congress has sent few major bills to the president’s desk, not because of any policy change.
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