-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 19, 2007 11:22:46 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Your Government, Signing Off
'Signing Statements' Followup Study Finds Administration Has
Ignored Laws
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post, June 19, 2007; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/18/
AR2007061801412.html
President Bush has asserted that he is not necessarily bound by the
bills he signs into law, and yesterday a congressional study found
multiple examples in which the administration has not complied with
the requirements of the new statutes.
Bush has been criticized for his use of "signing statements," in
which he invokes presidential authority to challenge provisions of
legislation passed by Congress. The president has challenged a
federal ban on torture, a request for data on the administration of
the USA Patriot Act and numerous other assertions of congressional
power. As recently as December, Bush asserted the authority to open
U.S. mail without judicial warrants in a signing statement attached
to a postal reform bill.
For the first time, the nonpartisan Government Accountability
Office -- Congress's investigative arm -- tried to ascertain
whether the administration has made good on such declarations of
presidential power. In appropriations acts for fiscal 2006, GAO
investigators found 160 separate provisions that Bush had objected
to in signing statements. They then chose 19 to follow.
Of those 19 provisions, six -- nearly a third -- were not carried
out according to law. Ten were executed by the executive branch. On
three others, conditions did not require an executive branch response.
The instances of noncompliance were not as dramatic as some of the
signing statements that have caused the most stir, such as Bush's
suggestion that he was not bound by a ban on torture in U.S.
military detention facilities. But congressional aides said they
were significant.
For example, Congress directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection
to relocate its checkpoints around Tucson every seven days to
improve efforts to combat illegal immigration. But the agency took
the law as an "advisory provision" that was "not always consistent
with CBP's mission requirements." Instead, the agency periodically
shut down its checkpoints for short periods of time, believing that
would comply with congressional demands.
Frustrated by the Pentagon's broad budget submissions for the
"global war on terrorism," Congress demanded in its 2006 military
spending law that the Defense Department break down its 2007 budget
request to show the detailed costs of global military operations,
such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The department ignored
the order. While the Pentagon did break out the costs of operations
in the Balkans and at Guantanamo Bay, it did not detail
expenditures in other operations.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency also ignored Congress's
demand that it submit an expenditure plan for housing assistance
and alternatives to the approaches that failed after Hurricane
Katrina. FEMA told the GAO that it does not normally produce such
plans.
In all those instances, presidential signing statements had
asserted that congressional demands were encroaching on Bush's
prerogatives to control executive branch employees as he sees fit
and to receive effective services from his employees. White House
spokesman Tony Fratto said Congress should not be surprised that
the administration carried out the recommendations of the signing
statements, although he cautioned that he could not know whether
the agencies took action because of the statements.
"The signing statements assert the president's understanding of how
the law should be executed, pursuant to his understanding of the
Constitution, and that's the way we deal with them," Fratto said.
But Democratic lawmakers jumped on what they see as the actions of
an imperial presidency with little respect for the law or the
legislative branch.
"The administration is thumbing its nose at the law," said House
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who
requested the GAO study and legal opinion along with Senate
Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.).
"This GAO opinion underscores the fact that the Bush White House is
constantly grabbing for more power, seeking to drive the people's
branch of government to the sidelines," Byrd said in a joint
statement with Conyers.
To be sure, some findings did not seem terribly egregious. In one
instance, a Defense Department response to a House subcommittee was
forwarded 17 days after its statutory deadline.
Nevertheless, the GAO's findings are legally significant, said
Bruce Fein, a conservative constitutional lawyer who served on an
American Bar Association task force that excoriated the president's
use of signing statements in a report last year. White House
officials have dismissed such concerns as overblown, suggesting
that the statements were staking out legal positions, not
broadcasting the administration's intentions.
But the GAO report suggests that the dispute over signing
statements is not an academic one, Fein said, adding that Congress
could use the report to take collective legal action against the
White House.
"At least it makes clear the signing statements aren't solely for
staking out a legal position, with the president just saying, 'I
don't have to do these things, but I will,' " Fein said. "In fact
they are not doing some of these things. You can't just vaporize it
as an academic question."
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